


Fluid's Demise Collection

by thatgirlfromasgard



Category: Hermitblr - Fandom
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Gen, Second Person Perspective, collection of oneshots, hermitblr demise 3, look most of these end in some kind of violent death, previously released via discord, so be warned that im not gonna warn for death in chapter notes, thats just simply how demise works
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-20
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:27:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 40
Words: 45,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27125864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatgirlfromasgard/pseuds/thatgirlfromasgard
Summary: This work is a collection of my attacks and deflects for Hermitblr Demise 3. Some of them might not make too much sense as they are a direct response to a different attack. None of this is edited. Quite some of it is rushed writing. Enjoy!
Kudos: 7





	1. Airlock

**Author's Note:**

> This work will be added on to for the rest of Demise 3. There is no set update schedule.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defense for Teithor against VoidSaysDie

Teithor may not have noticed anything as they were reading, but luckily, they weren’t alone in the room. Aside from the attacker, of course. Fluid silently moved up behind the trident-wielding ender person, a lot more quiet than you’d expect from someone wearing full platemail. Not a single clank betrayed them, and under their helmet a grin spread.

_Too easy._

As the attacker got ready to throw the trident, they felt it being ripped from their hands as a soft purple and blue glow washed over them. A split second later they could feel the prongs of the trident prodding in their own back.

“Yo, Teithor, do you wanna do the honours, or should I just get it over with?” Fluid asked out loud, the attacker turning their head towards them, only to be greeted by an expressionless helmet.

The reader looked up and around with a startle, calming down a little when they recognized one of their teammates.

“Hmm? Oh! I must’ve spaced out a little there. Go for it, kick them out I’d say.” With a dismissive hand gesture, they went back to reading once more.

Fluid’s grin widened.

“Excellent. You. _Walk_.”

Using the trident to less-than-gently steer the attacker in this way or that, the duo made their way through the various hallways of the ship, until they reached the main airlock. The door to the inside of the ship was open, and Fluid simply kicked the enderperson through before closing the door behind them.

A few buttons pressed on the side made the airseal kick in, and the various sounds coming from the walls around were a clear indicator of what was about to happen next. Fluid took up position in front of the door, watching through the window as the airlock was preparing to open to the dark abyss of space.

And when it did, when the door finally opened and the attacker was sucked out, they did nothing but wave.


	2. Dawn loves me, Dawn loves me not.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack against Dawn.  
> Contains torture and descriptions of pain.

There wasn’t a lot you could do, strapped to a chair with bonds of rope and metal alike. You had been alone, at first, left to ponder as to how you had gotten yourself into the situation to begin with. You had been fiddling with your sorting system, you were relatively sure of that, when a sudden sweet smell had enveloped you. You had thought it were simply flowers, at first, but as your eyelids had become heavier and heavier from one moment to the next, you had realised that for once, it wasn’t flowers you smelled. Th next thing you knew was waking up in this room.

After some time of trying out the bonds, someone had finally come. Their face was hidden behind an expressionless green visor, and their armour was not one you recognised. Or, perhaps… The various less-than-subtle spider themes scattered over it laid an answer on the tip of your tongue, but wouldn’t let you actually form it.

“Who are you? Let me go!” you said, but your words fell on deaf ears. Perhaps they hadn’t heard you, or perhaps they simply didn’t want to answer.

Whichever it was, it didn’t matter in the end. They had come closer and had sat next to you. And then they had grabbed your arm, gently taking one of the many petals between their fingers.

“You will live.”

Without warning, the figure pulled on the petal, and you felt it come loose with a strange and sharp pang of pain. Their hand then simply went to the next petal.

“You will die.”

Again, that same sensation came as the petal fluttered to the ground.

“You will live.”

It hit you what was happening, what they were doing, and terror gripped your heart. They were plucking your petals one by one, and that was done… You didn’t want to think about what would happen if there was an even number of petals on your body.

“You will die.”

\---

The sight of so many petals on the floor was beautiful, were it not for the fact that your arm was almost completely bare. It was cold, without the isolation your flowers normally so generously provided, and you felt every heartbeat pulsing through it followed by a surge of pain. You had long given up on not wincing or screaming or sobbing as the figure continued plucking off petals mercilessly.

“You will die. You will live. You will die. You will live. You will die.”

Petal after petal fell, and you were starting to wonder how many were left as the feeling of pins and needles slowly spread through your arm, becoming stronger and stronger with every petal fluttering to the ground.

“You will live. You will die. You will live.”

How long could this go on for still?

\---

At last, the last flower on your arm had been plucked clean, fluttering down with the promise of life. You would feel relieved if you weren’t in so much pain, but it was over. It had to be over, right?

The armour-clad figure stood up, but instead of walking away, they walked around you, taking your face in their hands. The sharp points of their gauntlets buried themselves into your skin, but it was nothing compared to the pulsing agony that was your arm. Your eyes widened.

“No, wait, I would live, you said I would live!” Your voice sounded broken, after so long, but nothing in the face of your torturer showed that they cared. Instead, their hand went to the one flower you had left, the one around your right eye. You tried flinching away, you really did, but there wasn’t much space for you to go to. The bonds held you back, refused to let you move as they pulled out the first of the petals.

“You will die.”

Tears started welling up in your eyes.

“You will live.”

You knew how many petals there were, and how many were left.

“You will die.”

You knew what the last one would say.

“You will live.”

You braced yourself, letting out one last sob.

“You will die. Pity.”

The last of your petals fluttered to the ground, and you looked as the other person took out what looked like a gun of sorts, with lights on the sides that matched the lights in their armour.

At least it would be quick.

They aimed, and you closed your eyes, trying to think of something else, just wanting to have something other than this person as your last thoughts.

Your mind went back to your sorting system, to the small things wrong with it, the small things that made it uniquely yours.

There was a soft smile on your lips as the intense heat of a plasmabolt ended you.


	3. What goes around, comes around

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Arkai from YanDan  
> Contains gore and blood.

After the series of murders you had planned and executed, you were happy to take a shot break for a moment. Hiding out in a house, you were slowly sipping on your glass of water, taking your time to think about the possibilities for a next hit. Drowning someone in lava sounded good, but on the other hand… You always had your trusty knives. And the knives were nice and personal, so much more personal than dropping an anvil ever could be.

You idly paged through your hitlist, jotting down a few ideas here and there, when a knock on the door came. A bit skeptically, you stood up. You weren’t really _expecting_ anyone, but on the other hand, it could be one of your teammates, in need of help. Weighing the options, you stood up, a knife in your hand, just in case. If it was someone that meant you harm, you could always try to stab them in the face or something, you had plenty of experience with that.

And so you opened the door, to see… No one? You blinked, not entirely sure of what was going on. Not even a second later, you saw something move, and a dog of bones jumped against you, knocking you down to the ground. It wasn’t difficult to see what it was.

“Grim? But… you were… I sent you to Arkai, how are you…?” you panted out, but unlucky for you, dogs don’t entirely understand English. Grim was no exception.

Instead, it pressed your shoulders down with its paws, sniffing your face with its bony skull. You laid still, giving it no reason to see you as prey or food or anything in that line. And yet…

Without warning, it sank its teeth into your throat, ripping and tearing at the flesh until it at last let go. You fought for breath and for freedom, but the dog was stronger than you, way stronger, and the best you could do was struggle pointlessly, letting blood spill out of your throat faster and faster. It hurt, it hurt so damned bad, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

Some say drowning is the worst way to go, but you frankly didn’t know how that could compare to having your throat ripped out, with breathing becoming harder and harder as blood flowed from your jugulars into your windpipe. It took a while, much longer than you would have expected, and Grim didn’t just stop biting. No, instead it started feasting on your still living and feeling flesh.

And when death finally came, you welcomed it.


	4. Burn bright, young thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack against Spelle.  
> Contains poisoning.

It was a dark and dreary night, but that didn’t stop you from going to your office. Mafia work was not a nine to five job, quite on the contrary even. Quite a large part of it was better suited for the night, even. Not that you cared much. Your night vision was excellent, thanks to your arachnid heritage.

The keys jangled in the door, the lock clicked, and you were about to enter when something in the room made you stop dead in your tracks. You squinted, unsure what to think. Of course, you had seen a lot during your time as the head of the mafia, but this… You frankly didn’t know how to go about it. Out of all things you had expected to find on your desk, a single cupcake was not one of them.

You blinked, waiting for something to happen. Surely this had to be a trap of some sort. Surely someone would jump out of the shadows any moment now, ready to try and fail to take your life for the umpteenth time. Really, it was starting to get old.

Then again, as nothing happened for a full minute, you started to feel more confident. If nothing had happened by now, nothing would. That was the theory, at the very least. With your head held high you entered, making a beeline for your desk. You loved yourself a good cupcake, and this one seemed to be prepared and decorated with eye for detail. The frosting on it depicted your face, with details ranging from the right eye colours to bits of more pointy frosting that represented mandibles and bits of hair.

“Huh… Well then.”

Looking around once more, you now spotted a small note in neat handwriting laying next to the cupcake, and you picked it up without thinking.

_With admiration, from one spider to another._

“Another spider… Must be Gondelf, then, though she could also just have given it to me. Oh well,” you shrugged, before picking up the cupcake. You didn’t even know your spider sister could bake this well, but you were not about to question a gift horse.

With a sigh you sat down in your large and comfortable desk chair, peeling the paper from the underside of the cupcake. It smelled really nice too, and it was even a little bit warm still, a sign that it hadn’t been made too long ago. Still, you did not wonder about when it had been placed there as you took a bite, chewing through the deliciousness.

At first you tried to take small bites, to savour the taste for longer, but it didn’t take all too long for you to realise you had more things to do, so in the end you just stuffed whatever remained into your mouth and went on with your work. There was some intel you needed to go through, to figure out what the next best step was, what direction you needed to send your underlings in.

Before long, though, you noticed how the letters started swimming on the paper, and you felt something burning in your stomach, and then in your veins. This wasn’t good, this wasn’t good in the slightest and you knew it, but at the same time, you didn’t know how to stop it, or what was going on in the first place. Poison, probably, but what kind? Did you have an antidote readily available?

You got to your feet, stumbling out of your office, towards the place where you knew you had a first aid kit. That was the plan, in any case. Was. You didn’t even manage to get to the door before you collapsed, the pain going from burning to searing, white hot agony in every inch of your body. You could barely think, not with the fire in your veins, it burnt too brightly for you to properly focus.

As the edges of your vision slowly turned golden, footsteps made you look up. The soft glow of multicoloured lights betrayed who was standing in front of you even before they stepped fully into your office, four pairs of glowing green eyes focussed on you.

“You-!” you managed to bring out, your voice shaking with strain.

“Hello there, Spelle. Are you… _enjoying_ my gift? I have to say, I didn’t expect you to actually eat it. And yet… Here we are.” Fluid sounded bored, if anything and you didn’t fully know why that bothered you so much. Then again, it wasn’t really _that_ high on your priority list at that point. You had never quite felt like this before, and somewhere, you knew that you would never quite feel this way again.

You didn’t answer the question. At that point, it cost you all your focus not to make a sound, to not let Fluid know how much agony you really were in. And boy, would you like to _scream_. The problem was that you were pretty sure that no matter how hard you screamed, it would never do the pain justice. You felt like you were on fire, you surely had to be, the burning pain being the only thing you were really aware of. Meanwhile, the gold kept closing in on your vision, followed by a pitch black not even your night vision could break through. Instinctively, you knew that once the gold was gone and everything went black, that would be it. No second chances, no antidotes. No more you. On the other side, you knew it would mean no more pain. No more burning. It would all be over.

You were very vaguely aware that Fluid came closer, kneeling in front of your twitching form.

“Back where I come from, this poison is called Pascal’s Fire. Nasty stuff. Once you get it in you, it never quite leaves you. That is, should you survive the first dose. It’s a pity your chance on that is _so_ low. Do you feel it burning, Spelle? Do you _feel_ how it’s destroying you, mind and body? I doubt you can even understand what I’m saying by now. Pascal’s Fire is mercifully quick, in that regard.”

The gold had spread over all you could see, and now for the first time you allowed yourself to scream, to let out some of the tension that had been rising and rising and rising, soaring on the pain that kept finding new ways to torment you beyond your wildest imaginations. You knew that even if you hadn’t made the decision, your body wouldn’t have taken much longer to just act on its own regard, your mind being pulled into a brilliant inferno.

In front of you , Fluid stood up again, moving over to the door. Once there, they turned around to face you one last time, although your mind couldn’t comprehend it anymore.

“Oh, this is nothing personal, by the way. This web simply only has space for _one_ spider, and that’s me.”

Then they were gone, leaving you alone with your agony. It rose and rose and rose until it suddenly was no longer there, when your vision went from golden to black. Your nerves simply couldn’t handle it anymore and had ceased function altogether, and your mind followed into that sweet nothingness of unfeeling not long after.


	5. Sudo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack against Chair.  
> Contains memory loss.

With all the killing going on, you had thought you were safe, or at the very least, relatively so. Unlike most of the people around, you were not made of flesh and blood. You did not need to worry about parts getting detached, for they could easily be reattached. Bolts could be replaced, wiring could be changed out, all without you ever truly dying. Of course, there was always the question of how many parts could be replaced before you were no longer truly _you_ , but at the same time, you were merely a very advanced AI. The program could run the same on whichever computer, in whichever body, and as long as the trained neural network got added, it would still be _you_. You were sure of that.

Of course, being not much more than a program in a shell also came with some problems. There was the issue of security that was always present, because the same channels you used to get your information and updates from, could be very easily be hijacked by someone with more malicious intent. Should your memory chips get damaged, that would also pose a problem. While your backups were regular, things that made you _you_ would still be missing. Valuable experiences, lost forever, and there would be nothing you could do about it.

You thought you had simply been downloading the latest security patch for your specific system, one that was supposed to fix a small bug that would allow someone to just completely shut you down when the right combination of outside stimuli would be given. It was not something you particularly felt like experiencing, so you had found a safe spot and had connected to the web, going into your preprogrammed update-trance. You were helpless during it, you knew that, but you were also reasonably sure you would not be found here.

You relaxed as you felt the new bits of code fall into their places, connecting with what was already there, finding a balance between old and new and learning from it in the process. That was how it worked, and how you had always done it. It was actually quite a nice feeling, almost like sinking into a hot bath or eating your favourite food, and you barely even needed to think about what was going on anymore.

Perhaps that was why you didn’t notice when the stream of data turned from good and helpful to malicious. Perhaps that’s why you didn’t notice your code changing more than you would have liked. Perhaps that’s why a backdoor into your system was installed right under your virtual nose.

Perhaps that was how you doomed yourself without knowing.

\---

It wasn’t even half a day later when things went really wrong. You were connected to the web once more, trying to find information on this or that, when you suddenly felt something poking around in your mind. You were aware of code being executed, code that wasn’t you but that also wasn’t _not_ you. It was new, and more and more of it flowed in every second. Someone trying to hack into your systems, trying to find your database, to get things out of there that they really shouldn’t. Precious memories, experiences that you were sure you wouldn’t be able to reproduce, secrets others had entrusted you with… the list went on and on.

You opened up a command prompt and made the letters and commands appear, hoping to disconnect before any real damage could be done to you. And yet, every time you sent off a command to be executed, something else happened, something that shouldn’t happen. You tried changing on which part of your filesystem your focus laid, but instead you suddenly saw trains drifting through your vision. You tried to find which port you had left open, what part of you was on display to the outside world, but instead you were suddenly hyper-aware of all processes that were running inside of you. Whatever you tried, it changed, not helping you further in the slightest. At the very least you were able to see what was about to happen in the split second before it actually happened, your mind logging the commands every time one was executed.

Still, it was not a good place to be in, not in the slightest. In a panic, you did the only thing you could think of, the only thing that could perhaps be able to thwart whatever was happening right there and then.

You reached for your ON button, intending to reboot and just cut all connections to the web. You would be fine once your systems turned back on again, you knew that. Connecting was a conscious choice, and after the reboot you would have all the time in the world to figure out what had happened as well as how to fix it.

Your vision blinked out, your mind calming down to nothingness for a short while. Then you slowly started becoming aware of your surroundings again as your various systems booted back up. You felt the small servomotors in your limbs move, checking if they still worked properly, your various sensors recalibrated, until at last, the proper wake-up signal came.

Except that you knew it was wrong the moment it came. It was wrong, so damned wrong. The words were seared into your mind as you started to lose it.

_sudo rm -rf –no-preserve-root_

You knew what the command did. You know how it would destroy everything you were, deleting and removing everything that made you _you_ , rooting out every file, every program, every little bit of code that currently allowed you to exist. You felt it all slip away, despite your efforts to stop it. The command kept going and going and going, taking all that was there as your code slowly started to make less and less sense.

In the end, you were nothing but a body, unmoving, unseeing, unknowing.


	6. Damsel in distress

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Teithor from DragonO.  
> Contains blood and gore.

“Watch out!”

Teithor just narrowly managed to dodge out of the way as your arrow whizzed past her. You were displeased for sure, and was just about to fire off another, or just breath your green breath over her, when you felt something clambering onto your tail and then further onto your back. Sharp metal nails dug between your scales, finding traction to pull whoever was climbing higher and higher. Your tail swatted, trying to get them off of you, but not to much avail. Whoever it was, they were stubborn.

Distracted as you were, you didn’t notice how Teithor had taken out a pair of twin swords and was now charging at you, ready to defend her life. At the last moment she jumped, swords high in the air, ready to stab you in the chest, while that pesky person on your back had reached your wings. You had your head turned towards them, trying to bite them or otherwise convince them to go away, but they kept diving just out of your reach, hiding behind your wings. There was no way to hit them without also hitting yourself, and you were not about to do that.

Perhaps that was a mistake. Actually, scrap that. There was no ‘perhaps’ about the situation. You felt metal piercing though your scales, this time in your chest, reaching deep inside. At the same time, you felt those metal nails start shredding through the webbing of your wings, cutting them into useless ribbons.

You screeched in pain, a terrible, thunderous sound, and once again tried to bite down, this time on Teithor. She dodged out of the way too, diving underneath your body, dragging her swords over the less protected skin of your underbelly and ripping it open. Blood and gore burst outwards as you felt your organs shifting and falling according to the whims of gravity, and you started trashing and stomping around in a last attempt to get free of your attackers. You were a dragon, after all, and these two… They were just measly humans. You _should_ be able to beat them easily, shouldn’t you? You had beaten so many others before.

And yet… These two deftly kept evading your attacks, that were becoming less and less powerful as you felt your life seeping out of you. These two kept doing damage in whatever way they could, and when you turned your attention to defend against one of them, the other would take their chance to stab or slash or rip or tear.

It was simply too much.

Too much for you to handle, to much for you to take, too much for you to survive. This was where the great dragon ended.


	7. Don't cross the council

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack against Jamie.  
> Contains kidnapping, stoning, and cults.

It had been night when they had taken you, dragging you from your bed and into the forest. There had been four of them, cloaked and hooded, glowing red eyes being the only thing visible in the darkness. They didn’t respond when you tried asking them who they were, or where they were taking you, but they tolerated no resistance. You had tried to struggle towards your freedom, tried to punch and kick and bite and do whatever you could to make them drop you, but it wasn’t to much avail. It only made them stop for a moment to bind your arms and legs together, to gag you, and to pull a hood over your head too, effectively blinding you. Then one of them had slung you over their shoulders, carrying you with ease.

“Next time we’re kidnapping someone, we’re bringing a cart,” one of them said, probably the one carrying you.

“Or maybe you just need to lift more, Meco!” insisted another, and the first one sighed.

“Oh, shut up Rax. Or do _you_ want to carry him?”

Those names. You recognised those names. They were all over the corkboard at your place, connected together with nice red strings. Red, and neon green.

The council.

The council that you had hunted for a long while, and here they were. Sure, you had tried to reveal their secrets, to expose their true identities for everyone to see, but… Well, you never thought it could possibly backfire. You thought you had laid low enough for them not to notice you, to not turn their eyes towards you to mark you as their target.

And yet, here you were. Being kidnapped by those people you had aimed your arrows at. You had an inkling who some of them were, and not so much who others were, but you had no doubt you would get to see them all.

The rest of the uncomfortable journey was filled with some banter from your captors, diving into such thrilling topics as the proper way to take care of your crocs, the danger posed by cassowaries and emu’s, musical theatre actors biting their lips, and last but not least how to write contracts in the most blame-deflecting way. All the while, you struggled to get loose, only to get slapped in the face a few times when these council members seemed to think it was too much.

\---

A while later, it sounded like the group entered somewhere subterranean, the air turning ever so slightly damp and stale as though not many people had been there in a long while. Heavy metal doors grated open, and seconds afterwards you got thrown onto the floor without so much as a warning. You scrambled backwards, hopefully away from your captors, until you bumped against a pair of feet. Chains jingled threateningly, and you felt gloved hands take hold of your arms, slapping manacles around your wrists. The same happened to your legs not much later, before you finally felt the ropes around them loosen and get taken off.

“Guys, why didn’t we just use manacles right from the start? That would’ve been a lot snaggier, don’t you think mates?” another voice sounded, with an accent that closely resembled your own. It stayed silent for a bit, before yet another voice popped up.

“Couldn’t you have said that earlier, Rec? Like, _before_ we left?”

“Do I _look_ capable, mate? I was just so stoked to do this, ya know?”

Multiple people chuckled, and you weren’t entirely sure why. How could they _laugh_ about kidnapping you? At the same time, these were the same people that had started up a cult entirely built around crocs, you weren’t entirely sure why you would have thought they would have been anything except totally out of their mind.

Without warning, the hood got pulled from your head, and you blinked at the sudden presence of light around you. For the first time, you got to see the council in their full… Well, you wouldn’t call it _glory_ , per se. They were a mismatched group, all wrapped in dark cloaks. All wearing those same neon green crocs. All wearing glasses that emitted a red glow. It did at the very least explain what they had looked like in the dark, but like this, in the light… you couldn’t take them seriously.

And so, you laughed. _These_ were the people you had been hunting? _This_ group? You would not have expected it. These were not the people you would have pointed out if someone would have told you there were council members present.

One of them, carrying an umbrella and wearing neon green croc gloves, raised an eyebrow, while the one in the green armour simply shook their head.

“Unbelievable. I’m defo gonna see that as an insult to the croc gods,” said the one in a dragon hoodie. Rec, judging by the voice. “Ah well. You guys deal with this, I’m gonna have some avos and biccies for brekky.”

Rec then left the room, leaving you with the other three.

“Rax, you got the last meal arranged, right? Then Ari and I will go rope some more council members into digging the hole,” Meco said with a nonchalance you didn’t quite expect as they fidgeted with something on one of their gauntlets, and suddenly various bits of light in their armour started glowing in soft colours. 

_Wait a second. Last meal? Hole?_ _What the hell are they planning?_

You struggled to your feet, not entirely sure yet what you were going to do, but it was better than laying on the ground.

“Yep! I got something nice figured out for him. Speaking of which, I should go and collect that too, before it gets cold.” Apparently, the one wrapped in vines was Rax, making the one with the umbrella Ari. At least, that would make logical sense, but you never knew with these people.

Without paying more attention to you, the three council members left the room, shutting and locking the door behind them. You tried calling after them, but that damned gag got in the way, muffling everything you could have possibly said to nothing more than grunts and loose syllables. Frustratedly, you reached for it, pulling it out of your mouth and away from you. It was just a piece of cloth, a purple-ish black with a neon green croc pattern on it. Of course it was. What else could it be?

You sighed, shuffling towards a wall as fast as the manacles would allow, before sliding down along it and sitting on the ground. This was not how you imagined your night would be going, not in the slightest. And yet, here you were. Alone, god knows where. Did your teammates even know what had happened to you? Would they even come looking for you?

You certainly hoped they would, and you hoped they would do it quickly. With these people, there was no certainty, especially not with the casual mentions of a last meal and something that could literally only be alluding to a grave. Was it so bad that you wanted to live, to see your friends again?

\---

After a while, you weren’t exactly sure how long, the door opened once more, with Rax carrying a plate covered with a silver cloche and a glass filled with a vaguely grey-ish drink.

“What are you planning? Where am I? Are you going to let me go, or am I going to die here?” Questions poured out of your mouth before you could even think about it, and you got to your feet once more.

“No,” Rax answered, and you were confused for a moment. None of the questions you had asked called for that answer, not really, and even if they had, it wasn’t clear to which question it was a response to. Instead of divulging you further, he just put the plate and drink down on the ground.

“Oh, come on mate. You know the whole who-are-the-drocs thing was just a joke, not an attack! Just let me go, okay?” you tried bargaining, but Rax’ expressionless mask remained expressionless.

“I would suggest you eat something. We have a schedule, after all.” He lifted the cloche from the plate, revealing another neon green croc, this time filled with beans, side by side with what could only be vegemite on timtams. An unholy combination that probably broke some international treaty on how to treat prisoners in multiple ways. “Bon appetit!”

“No, wait, what do you mean? Schedule? What is going on? Why won’t anyone tell me what is going on here?!” you yelled out in frustration, your hands balling into fists as you made your way over to him.

“Oh, you know. Official council business. Let’s just say the Void is… unhappy with your existence.” He sounded apologetic enough, but still shrugged and walked away, leaving you with your meal. Your last meal, apparently.

You swallowed. You weren’t really hungry. Not in the slightest. But at the same time, you didn’t know what would happen if you _didn’t_ eat. For all you knew leaving it would make them kill you, but on the other side, it might as well have been poisoned. You rubbed your forehead as you tried to make some kind of sense from the situation, but the only way you could fit all the puzzle pieces together was by concluding you were going to die here. And that was not necessarily a conclusion you were willing to think about. You simply wanted to live, was that too much to ask for?

You shook your head, shuffling over to the wall to lean against it for a moment. Meanwhile, you periodically glared at the food, getting more and more worked up about its mere presence. Was it simply there to gloat, to mock? Was it going to be your downfall, or would it be the one thing to save you? Or was it simply a meal, nothing more, nothing less?

Out of frustration you punched the wall, only to discover the stone was a whole lot stronger than the bones of your hand. You yelped out in pain, tears springing to your eyes. It was just unfair. This whole situation was unfair. You slid down against the wall, sitting down cradling your broken hand. This wasn’t helping you in any way and you knew it, but what could you do?

Your eyes kept finding their way back to the meal, some bits of steam still coming from the beans, indicating they were at the very least still a little bit warm. But no, you couldn’t eat that, you wouldn’t, you simply _refused_.

And that’s how Meco found you when they got back, the food untouched on the floor. They sent one look at it before letting out a sigh and shrugging.

“Come with me. It is time.”

“Time for _what_?”

You were not about to stand up, not in the slightest. Not until you got answers.

“You’ll see. Now come with me or I will have to force you.” They sounded disinterested as they studied the metal nails at the end of their gauntlet, and something about the nonchalance filled you with dread.

“N-no,” you still managed to bring out, and Meco immediately made eye contact with you.

“Have it your way, then.”

They came closer, and despite you trying to move away from them, the cell you had been in sadly had finite dimensions and before long you found yourself in a corner.

“Really, this would all be a lot easier if you just worked along here.”

You shook your head, trying ball up as much as you could, to make picking you up as difficult as you could muster. It just evoked an annoyed sigh, before Meco grabbed both your ears and just started pulling upwards. You yelped, their nails drawing blood, but you had to resist, you simply had to.

At least, that’s what you thought, up until the point the pain became too much. You could only bear so much, and you were rapidly approaching that border.

“Auch! Stop it! Stop it! I- I’ll come!”

You unballed, offering up your wrists and the chain between them to grab instead. It didn’t take Meco long to take it in their hands and to pull you to their feet, and then after them. You stumbled in their footsteps, following where they took you, just to take some pressure away from your wrists. It turned out that being dragged along by a broken hand was not a nice feeling in the slightest.

And so you were lead through a short series of hallways and chairs, until Meco and you entered a courtyard. On one side of it was a hole with a small mound of freshly dug earth, on the other side was a large pile of neon green crocs. Multiple people were already waiting there, and you recognised a few of them from earlier. Others, though, were new to you. All of them were wearing the same black cloaks, the same red glowing glasses, and the same neon green crocs. Meco lead you towards the hole, which seemed a little bit on the shallow side, not even large enough to bury you in. That was something, at the very least. You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding, but the tension in your body didn’t disappear. Not in the slightest.

On the edge of the hole, you stopped, looking down into it and then back at the council members around you. This was a trap. It had to be a trap.

“Hop in,” came Meco’s words, and you swallowed. This could only be bad. This literally only could be bad. The fact that Ari and Rec were standing there too, with an umbrella respectively a shovel in their hands, didn’t make the situation any better.

“And what if I don’t?”

Another sigh.

“Ari, could you please…?” The other person walked up to you, then swung their umbrella towards your head. It hit heavier than you would have thought it would, and you slumped forwards, your eyes falling closed.

\---

You woke up to a choking pressure all around the lower half of your chest and downwards. Your head hurt, your hand hurt, and as you tried to look around, you saw that you were buried up until your midriff. You tried wiggling free, but the earth was packed densely around you. Then you looked up, looking at the council members one by one. They were all holding crocs now, some of them gently throwing them in the air a little and catching them again, all waiting for something.

And you didn’t have to wait long.

Rec came into view again, having traded the shovel for crocs as well. Then they loudly spoke up.

“Council members! Before you stands an enemy to the Void and to the Council! You all know what we do with our enemies here!”

You spotted a grin here and there, you saw some people spitting in your general direction, but Rec wasn’t done yet.

“For acts against the Council, for working against the will of the Void and our lord Droc, you are hereby sentenced to _die_.”

With that, she tossed the croc in your direction with a speed you had not expected. It hit you right on the collar bone, and you winced, the message not entirely landing yet.

_Me? An enemy? Sentenced to die? But…_

You didn’t have much time to think before the crocs started raining down on you, thrown from various directions, making it nigh impossible to dodge all of them. And that wasn’t even taking into account the fact that you were partially buried.

“No! Auch! Stop it! I mean you no harm! Please!”

More and more neon green was flung in your direction, with more and more speed, and you felt bruises forming and your skin splitting open in various places. Before too long, your white coat was stained red, and you were breathing heavily as sob after sob left your mouth. Of _course_ they couldn’t have chosen a quick way for you to go. Of _course_ it had to be painful, of _course_ it had to be stretched out as long as it could be.

Your dwindling pleas kept falling on deaf ears as you got hit more and more until you were coughing up blood. And yet, you still lived. You felt every shoe connect, you felt every bone break with unrelenting waves of pain, but it wasn’t over, you were still awake and alive for some reason, though you did notice focussing on reality became harder and harder. Your head ached, your lungs burnt, your heartbeat was unsteady, and blood was trickling down from more places than you could imagine, but you were still alive. There was no mercy, no peace, just hit after hit after hit and you were wondering how much more you could take, what would be the shoe to end you.

It was strange, thinking about it like that, just _knowing_ that you would go in such a way as this. You had always thought it would be more… Well, _heroic_ , in a way. More like something you would hear about in tales of old, the way a protagonist would go. This… This wasn’t that. This wasn’t that by a long shot.

At last, you saw your vision become blotchy and black, darkness closing in on the edges. It wouldn’t be long now, you knew that. And in a way, you were ready to embrace it. Eternal darkness, just the end, it was so much better than this torment. It simply _had_ to be. It would most definitely be easier, to just let go and be done with it, to give up and give in.

You didn’t like giving up, though.

But really, did you have any other option? They were not going to stop, you knew that, and while they had already thrown a bunch of crocs, the pile behind the council members didn’t look all too much smaller than it had in the beginning. Would it really be that bad to just… To close your eyes and stop thinking? Wouldn’t that be better? Didn’t you want to keep the honour to yourself?

A sob followed by a sigh came out of your mouth as a few more crocs hit your head. The darkness took over your vision at last, the pain subsiding, and you felt your muscles relax at last.

You toppled over, a last laboured breath rolling over your lips.

The ground was nice and cool, almost like a pillow you could just drift away on.

And drift away you did, finally at peace.


	8. Hunter and prey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself against YanDan.  
> Contains poisoning and thoughts of self-harm.

You prided yourself in your murdering rampage. Wherever you went, you caused fear, pain, suffering, death, but not today. You tried to, of course. You always did. Your trusty knives longed for blood, as did you, and you had set out to hunt.

If only you knew what you had been hunting. Maybe you wouldn’t have done so, then. Maybe you would have picked a different target.

But your hubris got to you. You were a killer, a hitman, a force to be reckoned with, not some simple prey. No, you were far above that. At least, that’s what you thought.

You had snuck up on them, ready to bury a knife in their back, to twist it around with sadistic pleasure before leaving them to die in a pool of their own blood, but things went differently this time. You had not expected the armour to be so though, you had not expected them to turn around and scratch you over the face with sharp metal nails.

And you hadn’t expected how much it burnt, how much it hurt, how much you wanted to peel of the skin of your cheeks just to get rid of the feeling. There was something in your system, something that shouldn’t be there, you knew it, but you simply had no way to get it out. Not in the slightest.

Stumbling backwards, you looked at them, at those piercing eyes, at that emotionless mask. You swore you heard them chuckle, warped and echoing through a layer of metal.

“How _cute_. _Run_ , little fly, run while you still can.”

There was not a hint of fear in the voice. Instead, there was something else. Something you didn’t like. There was a specific kind of _certainty_ in that voice, and it pushed past your own bloodthirst. It shook you to your core, and when they started walking forwards, towards you, you didn’t wait a second longer and simply booked it.

You ran as fast as your legs could carry you, as long as your lungs were willing to, and all the while that feeling of burning spread throughout you. After all, your blood was pumping through your body _fast_ , and whatever was in it was circulating too.

It didn’t take long to become unbearable, and you stumbled to the ground, tripping over your own feet. Still, you wanted, no _needed_ to keep going, to get away from what was once your target but now your hunter. Steps of metal on stone echoed towards you like the ticking of a clock, always at the same pace, getting inevitably closer to your end with every beat.

They didn’t even bother speeding up as you started crawling over the ground, trying to escape, trying so hard to get away, but you knew there was no use to it. You knew it wouldn’t take long before you were totally unable to do anything, your body exhausted by the run and the poison alike, still clutching your knife in one hand as though it would somehow save you.

The crawl became slower and slower as your arms could barely pull your weight anymore, and the footsteps closed in on you until you felt a foot on your back, pushing you down to the ground and keeping you there.

Your struggle at that point was more symbolical than effective as you tried to get them off of you, but they just wouldn’t budge. Instead, they chuckled again, bending forwards to get closer to you.

“Oops. Caught you. You and I are going to have _so. Much. Fun_.”


	9. Ex libris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Dnd.  
> Contains body horror.  
> Slightly inspired by TMA.

In all your life, you had never found it cold between the ice spikes. Well, maybe you had, once, before the incident with the rose, but if you had, you couldn’t quite remember. You just happily lived there, bare feet and bare armed, building your builds and fighting your enemies. Polar bears and husks, mostly, given your location, but you didn’t mind. You could live with that, and so, live you had.

It was on one of your sparse trips out of the spikes when you stumbled upon it: A dungeon room, partially open to the sky where the roof had caved in. Strange, you had never noticed it before. Not once. Then again, you barely came here, so you might as well have missed it. The familiar hisses of spiders sounded from below, and something compelled you to go in.

In hindsight, that was your first mistake.

You threw a torch down, to ward off the monsters that roamed there, and then gently let yourself drop in through the roof. You had no ladders with you, but you _did_ have your pickaxe, so in the worst case you could carve a way up and out for yourself.

The room was sparsely decorated, most things that had once hung from the wall having decayed with time. Cobwebs cluttered up the corners, a testament of the number of spiders that had made that place their home, and two relatively untouched chests stood against the wall, almost _beckoning_ you to open them. That wasn’t the thing that pulled most of your attention, though.

No, that honour went to the object in the centre, glowing with ethereal flames every so often. It looked like a cage, with something floating in the middle of it. Your first response was to go and touch it, although your gut managed to convince you that that was perhaps far from a good idea. Or, well, it wasn’t exactly your _gut_ telling you that, but that set of chittering voices that had never left you alone since picking that damned wither rose all those years back. They wanted you to survive, that much was true, but you didn’t now what their agenda was, why _you_ were so important that they had steered you away from certain death at multiple occasions.

Much as you didn’t want to, you had learnt to listen to them.

And so, you kept your hands close to yourself as you squatted next to the cage, to peer into the centre. At first, you weren’t exactly sure what you were looking at. But then, as more pieces drifted into view, you started to realise what it resembled. Another spider. More ghostly, this time, floating above the ground. It didn’t seem to notice your presence, ever staring forwards with unseeing eyes, and you almost felt bad for it. Whatever that cage was, whatever it was doing, you were quite certain that the spider had done nothing to deserve this.

A few moments longer you stared, before standing up with a sigh. You were not going to touch the cage, but there were other things here. Perhaps there would be something useful in the chests still, left behind by whoever built the room… Yes, getting something nice out of this place was something you welcomed with open arms.

Your second mistake.

With every step you set closer to one of the chests, the beckoning became stronger. Stronger and stronger and stronger until it drowned out the chittering words of warning your saviours were so helpfully giving you.

You had expected the chest to open with difficulty, judging by the amount of time they would have been there, but it opened up smoothly, invitingly. At first you were greeted by the sight of some cleaned bones, a few satchels of redstone, and some sticks, but something compelled you to shove it all aside and dig deeper.

There it was, glistening at the bottom of the chest. A leather-bound book, a red ribbon keeping it tied shut. It almost seemed to glow, and before you could even think about it, you had already gone and grabbed it.

That was your third mistake. And yet, you still hadn’t passed the point of no return. No, that came the moment you slipped the ribbon off of the book and opened it. The chittering in your head was loud, so loud, warning you about it, commanding you to put the book away, telling you to drop it and to destroy it and to leave and to never visit this place ever again, but for once, you didn’t heed what they said. This one time, there was a call that was stronger than that of the voices.

Even when you laid your eyes on the first page, that was blank except for what looked like a stamp and a name, you didn’t yet know in how much trouble you were. After all, you didn’t recognise the name _Jurgen Leitner_ , nor would you ever do so.

Another page. The title page this time. _Bane of Arthropods_ , it said in a neat and loopy font. You just couldn’t help yourself, muttering the words out loud. There was no author stated, but why would there be? This was enough. You turned the page and started reading, your mouth unconsciously forming the syllables, tasting the words.

They made no sense to you, not in the slightest, and you weren’t even sure what language you were reading. At the same time, it made _perfect_ sense to you. The words filled you with a feeling of belonging, with the feeling that everything was right in the world.

And so, you read on eyes flying over the pages, words slipping out of your mouth as you felt a feeling of dread descend over you. You heard skittering noises behind you, but you didn’t look. You couldn’t look, how could you? You hadn’t finished your book yet. You need to keep going, going, ever on and on page after page after page until you had reached the end, because you were _sure_ something bad would happen if you stopped halfway through.

You barely even noticed how the chittering voices in your head slowly died away, granting you some peace and quiet for the first time in forever.

You barely even noticed how your vision slowly shifted, colours draining away but depth somehow doubling.

You did, however, notice how your body started changing, you felt every bit of it. You felt how extra arms and legs pushed their way out of your sides, you felt something growing out of your cheeks, you noticed how you stood more and more hunched over, leaning on those new appendages and it hurt so _bad_ but still you could not stop reading.

You simply couldn’t.

You didn’t _belong_ yet, not fully at the very least.

And oh, how you wanted to belong. You didn’t know to _what_ , but you did know that you had never felt something quite like this before.

In the end, you had to put the book down on the ground, your fingers growing together in such a way you simply couldn’t hold it anymore. Not that it mattered. You only had a few more pages to go.

Just a few more, and then you would be done.

Just a few more, and you would belong.

The sounds coming out of your mandibles had long since stopped sounding like any kind of human language, now being clicks and hisses and a very sparse soft grunt. Still, it felt _right_. It felt so _right_ to be making those noises, to be standing like this, to look like this, to _be_ this.

And you were happy.

At least, you thought you were.

With one more page to go, you felt the happiest you had ever been, and you had no reason to doubt you would become even happier once you had finished the book.

Of course, that’s not how the book worked. It caught you unaware, at first, the gentle pull towards the cage, but you didn’t think too much of it. The pull, however, got stronger and stronger with every word, more and more difficult to ignore with every sentence, and you felt yourself moving towards it, slowly moving backwards as you read the last few lines. You couldn’t help it, you simply had to. You had to belong, and now you knew where.

It would be your place for all of eternity, or rather, until you were freed. You knew that now.

You tried to stop reading, you really did, but it was far, far too late for that. Instead, the last words chimed in the air, and you touched the cage.

You felt yourself being sucked in through the bars as though they weren’t even there, and for a moment you felt like there was something- no, some _one_ else in there with you, but the feeling fled away just as quickly as it had come.

And then you were simply _there_ , floating, _belonging_. You turned around slowly, but not by your own volition, and you could do nothing but stare as another spider was in the room now, its shape changing slowly into something more humanoid. You didn’t recognise the person, but they sent you an apologetic smile, before closing the book and wrapping it in the red ribbon again.

“I’m sorry… but thank you. You freed me.”

They gently put the book back in the chest, rearranging the other objects to cover it. Then they picked up your torch, looking up at the ceiling. It looked like they were crying.

“Please don’t take this too harshly. You’ll get used to it.”

You wanted to respond, you really did, but you simply couldn’t. Whatever spell had made you read out the entirety of the book was now keeping you silent, unmoving, only able to see and observe what happened as you slowly spun around and around. The other person climbed up the rubble in the wall, disappearing out of your sight and taking a part of the light with them.

For a few seconds, it was silent, nothing but the occasional skittering of spiders somewhere in the room.

Then came sounds you knew all too well.

The sounds of construction, of blocks being placed, and the little bit of light that was coming through the hole in the ceiling became less and less with every noise.

You wanted to scream, you wanted to shout, you wanted to be left out, but you couldn’t, you just couldn’t.

The only thing you could do was watch as the last of the light disappeared, and you were alone.

Alone with the spiders to which you now belonged, trapped in a cage and in your own lonely mind.

You would never have thought that you would ever miss the chittering voices, but now that there was nothing else to communicate with… You thought differently.

And thus, you spun.

You spun and spun and spun until you forget who you were and where you were and what you were. All you knew was the cage, lonely and untouchable, your home for eternity.


	10. Hero of the village

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Dory.  
> Contains gore and blood.

You were breathing heavily as you looked around the battlefield. It had been perhaps half an hour since all hell had broken loose in the village you had called home, but that had been enough. The wooden houses were burning, villagers laid dead in the streets and in a few places, you could see the once-lumbering shapes of the iron golems, fallen to the ground and motionless.

You were still standing though, all alone on top of the village church. You knew there were still survivors, there simply had to be. At least a few of the villagers should have found a place to barricade, either in one of the stone buildings or in one of the nearby cave entrances.

Even then, you knew it wouldn’t last forever. The raiders, with their unnaturally grey skin, had shown no sign of wanting to stop, not even as their ravagers had toppled over the fences and market stalls, not even when the pillagers had broken down the remaining doors with their axes, not even when the illagers pulled a crying family outside of a burning house, not even when the evokers offered them up to the ven despite their pleas.

You knew that given the chance, they would erase any sign of there ever having been a village from the face of the earth.

And you were just standing on that rooftop, your bow clutched in your shaking hands.

You had told the villagers that it would be okay, that you would protect them, that they didn’t need to worry about the horns sounding in the distance. If only you had known. If only you hadn’t given them that hope. If only you had helped them evacuate, to find shelter and wait it out, and then to rebuild later.

But no. You had decided to stand up against these bullies. You had decided that they would not take the village.

They had done so anyway, regardless of the arrows you had shot, regardless of the fact that you had managed to kill a few of the illagers. There had simply been too many of them. That awful horn had sounded again and again and again, with more raiders flowing over the hills each time, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

And so you stood there, on that rooftop, keeping an eye out for targets you might be able to pick off. You knew there had to be a raid captain somewhere, signified by a banner strapped to his back, but you hadn’t spotted it yet. If you could shoot him… That would be a good thing. That, or one of the evokers, that would also be good.

 _There_.

You quietly nocked an arrow, pulling back the bowstring and aiming. With a little bit of luck it would hit in the right place, and the raiders would be none the wiser as to where it had come from. At the last moment you held your breath, steadying your shaking hands, before letting go.

The arrow whizzed through the air, going straight for your target and hitting him clean in the neck. He didn’t even make a sound as he dropped to the floor, but that didn’t matter. Another raider stepped out from behind the burning shell of a house, staring straight at you with eight emotionless green eyes. They didn’t look like the other raiders, though. This one wore armour, glowing in soft colours. This one had crystalline wings on their back, and a blue-ish white energy flowing around their hands.

It unnerved you. This was out of pattern. You had seen raiders before, you had seen illagers before, this was not supposed to be there. This was new. You raised your bow, nocking another arrow, drawing, and letting go. The armoured raider didn’t even blink as it whizzed past them, landing behind them. Instead, they beat their wings once, taking to the sky.

You shot again, and again, and again, but the raider kept moving out of the way of the arrows in the nick of time, all the while slowly coming closer to you.

And then your quiver was empty.

Your heart dropped as you fumbled to get out the small dagger you kept for emergencies. Like for when your quivers emptied out. A chuckle came from the raider, who sped up now, landing on the roof as well. You didn’t like it, you didn’t like it in the slightest. You looked over your shoulder, to see how much room you had to dodge and evade, but it wasn’t all too much. And with the raider closing in from the other side… You knew you had to get out of there, but deep down you knew there was no way out.

Illagers still roamed the streets, as did their ravagers, and the plains did not really offer many spots to hide in. And that was assuming you would manage to get away from this strange raider.

You tossed your bow to the side, clutching your dagger with both hands and keeping it between you and your enemy. It was the least you could do to not go down without a fight.

“It’s pointless. Surrender now and I _might_ make it quick.”

You bit your lip but remained silent, not wanting to give in. Surrender would mean certain death, but fighting… Fighting offered a chance at life, however slim.

“Have it your way, then.”

You enemy leapt forwards, launching themselves towards your hands first, but you narrowly managed to dodge out of the way. Your dagger skidded over their armour but didn’t find a weakness to pierce through. Nevertheless, you didn’t waste time to counter them now that their back was at the very least a little bit turned towards you.

Wrong. They had turned even before they had landed, and instead of sticking a dagger right between two plates of armour, you felt a hand grasping your wrist, pulling you out of balance and towards them. At the same time, their other hand shot out and wrapped around your throat, sharp metal nails digging into the tender flesh. They twisted your wrist, forcing you to drop you dagger, and then lifted you up by the neck. With your free hand you grabbed their wrist, trying to either force them to let go of you in the best case or offering a little bit of support for your neck in the worst case, all the while trying to kick them wherever you could.

It wasn’t a whole lot of places, and it wasn’t too effective. Armour beat shoes.

“Let me go!” you managed to push out, struggling to catch a breath.

“The time for surrender is long past. You’re _mine_.” Again, the raider cackled, and you felt the hairs in your neck stand up straight. You didn’t like this. You didn’t like this in the slightest but you couldn’t see an obvious way out that didn’t end in your death.

If anything, though, it made you double your attempts to kick them. It seemed to annoy them enough to make them squeeze your throat a little bit harder, their nails drawing blood now.

You winced and yelped, but you didn’t give them the pleasure of hearing you scream. No, you wouldn’t give them that. Not even when they started walking towards the side of the roof, not even when you noticed they held you above the streets far below.

It was a drop you could survive, and probably _would_ survive. As you looked down, though, you saw how a ravager came around the corner, and you knew that you wouldn’t survive _that_. Your eyes widened as you looked from one threat to the other, and you had to fight to push down tears. You were not going to give them that. You refused, you simply refused. Instead, you raised your eyes to the sky, where the sun shone down on you without mercy. Had it been night, perhaps you would have had a chance. The night was your domain, especially during a full moon. But it wasn’t full moon now, was it? You were simply out of options now.

The raider let go of your wrist and throat almost simultaneously. Your grip on their gauntlet slipped as you fell down, the street below coming towards you at a high speed.

You landed with the sickening crunch of bones and a white-hot flare of pain. Still, you managed to bite down a scream.

_No. They won’t get that from me._

A deep rumbling growl sounded next to you, and you didn’t have to look to know what it was. Instead, you just tried to move, dragging yourself over the gravel path in a last act of resistance, in a last act of defiance.

Not that it mattered much. The ravage barely had to change its course as it barrelled towards you, horns sticking forwards, aimed straight at you. You braced yourself, making yourself as small as possible, and while it helped you move out of the way of its horns… You still felt the teeth graze you, taking bits of skin and hair with them, and you still saw those massive hooves closing in, stomping on you as though you were nothing.

You felt your spine break as the first one landed on top of you, mercifully ending the pain in your legs but replacing it with a pain that was perhaps worse. This time, you didn’t manage to contain a scream.

It only lasted for a split second though, as another one of the hooves came down on your head, and your skull split open. It hurt until it didn’t, and then it was done.

And the raider on the rooftop cackled.


	11. Puppet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Missie.

The spider silk was wrapped tightly around your body’s limbs, moving them around expertly. You felt them pull, dictating the way you swayed, and while you tried to go against it, the most you could offer was some token resistance. It wasn’t enough to stop your feet from slowly dancing towards what you know would mean death. The pool of lava bubbled threateningly, and even from this distance you could feel the heat on your vines, and smell the sulphur in the air.

The static on your screen turned darker and quicker as you struggled. You tried leaning backwards and going limp, which seemed to help for a few seconds before the puppeteer had adjusted and had you back on your legs again. You tried digging your feet into the floor, but the stone wouldn’t budge and only served to peel bits of already decaying flesh from your bones.

You had the most luck when you managed to wrap your arms around a stalagmite, turning them around each other quickly such that the spider silk bound both your forearms together. At least that way, you were relatively sure they wouldn’t be untangled all too quickly. And you were right, in a way. The puppeteer didn’t bother untangling, and instead pulled all strings at once, dragging your body upwards and over the stone pillar. You felt the rough surface of the stalagmite grating over your vines, drawing sap, and you were aware of how it tore more flesh and cloth away from your body too. At the very least your screen wasn’t too badly damaged, so that was something.

You were dropped to the floor with little regard for your well-being. And sure, while you heard some bits of bone snapping in your legs, that had never stopped you before, and it most definitely didn’t stop the puppeteer. You looked, and you could vaguely see bits of sharp white protruding from your legs where they hadn’t before. The limbs themselves were also bent in a highly unnatural way, and that was discounting the amount of warping your vines had already done over time.

On and on the spider silk lead you, closer and closer to the pool of lava. And with each step, you noticed how your legs gave out more and more, bones sticking out further and further. Still, it was all okay until one of them hit one of your vines with a sharp edge, and the static on your screen turned a lot darker for a split second. Precious sap poured out, and you smelled how it started evaporating quite soon after thanks to the temperature of the cave. You couldn’t lose too much of the stuff, or you would become a whole lot more flammable than you already were, and that sounded like a bad thing.

Still, you were moved ever forwards. The heat was becoming more and more intense, the air getting dryer and dryer and you didn’t like it. You already didn’t like your climate hot and arid when there was no lava or threat of death involved, let alone _this_ situation. Once again, you leaned backwards, letting yourself fall to the ground in what was perhaps a last act of defiance. You almost instantly wished you hadn’t. The stone floor was hot too, hotter than your vines liked, and you felt it searing already.

For once, you were happy when the spider silk raised you up and away from it, even though it meant you were brought even closer to your demise. Okay, on second thought, maybe it was better to be searing on the floor, your sap slowly coming to a boil. You could live with that.

You couldn’t quite live with being tossed in a lava pool by someone you hadn’t even seen. There had to be someone behind it though, you knew that, but you didn’t know who, and at this rate you would never know.

Your static became darker and darker, racing over your screen faster and faster as you toed closer and closer to the edge. You struggled against the spider silk, but your movements weren’t your own, not anymore, and before you knew it you were on that edge.

Before you knew it one of your feet was hovering over that pool, and you felt your vines shrivelling up in the heat. You smelt how the remaining skin on your feet dried out and started searing, but there was simply no way for you to turn back to safety.

Your other leg got moved forwards too, and for an impossible moment you felt yourself hanging in the air above the pit.

Then all at once, the silken threads went slack, and you were falling.

The lava greedily swallowed you, burning every bit of you it touched, drying out all organic matter that remained. Your flowers caught fire and were gone in a second, and your television was melting quickly, the smell of burnt plastic heavily in the air. And just like that, from one moment to the other, you felt parts of you slip away. Your vines were all but gone in an instant, your brain had cooked and was burning, and the glass of your screen cracked and melted down. All parts that had come together to form you, gone, corrupted, broken beyond repair.

In the end, though, in the end it all came together one last time.

In the end, you were nothing but a puff of smoke rising over the lava.


	12. Hubris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Liz.  
> Contains poisoning and blood.

Old myths warned of hubris. Feeling confident in what you did wasn’t wrong, but too much of it… It could easily cause downfall.

You had never believed in those myths. They were nothing more than old stories, passed on to amuse people. Sure, some of them sounded as though they hid some great lesson, but didn’t all stories? A hidden message, found only by reading between the lines and making assumptions about what you managed to bring to the light. The type of thing teachers wanted you to do when a poet would mention someone was dressed in red, or when a writer described a dreary day in great detail.

You never had time for that kind of thing. You had never wondered whether that red dress could have meant something more. You had never thought about the possible implications of a rainy day at the beginning of a story. It was just a dress, and it was just rain, simple as that.

As such, you didn’t consider yourself warned about hubris. It was all myths and some kind of universal karma anyway, and you believed you were in charge of your own fate.

Perhaps that’s why you bragged about still living, while the others of your rank had fallen, while the Watchers you served had long kicked the dust. You didn’t think it would have the implications it did in fact have.

You see, depending on who hears the words, you are basically digging your own grave. The fallen see it as a sign for revenge as you boast, while it makes you an easy target for those that still live.

How is it, to live with a target painted on your back? To never quite feel safe where you are, to know you are hunted? Does it scare you, dear Listener, to know you are the only one left? Does your heart skip a beat when you hear footsteps headed your way, do you find yourself searching for more exits every time you enter a room?

Do you fear death?

Perhaps you should. Deep down, you know you should fear death, and yet, you are still out there, proclaiming your beating heart, letting your breaths be heard by all, living and dead alike. Deep down, you know what you are doing will only bring your own demise.

Then why does it come as a surprise when your tea tastes different from normal? Why does it come as a surprise that you feel it burning in your throat, before a numbness takes hold of you? Why do you flinch when your cup shatters on the ground, moments before you yourself fall down?

You could have seen all of it coming, had you just looked, had you just heeded those myths of old.

You could have prevented it all, had you simply kept your mouth shut and your head down.

But you didn’t.

Instead, here you are, laying on the ground as you feel spasms rock your body. Here you are, feeling how the poison dismantles you from the inside out. Here you are, hoping for an antidote of which you know it won’t come.

Here you are, dying.

You find yourself thinking back at the time before this, when you treated it all as a game. A game you had thought you were going to win. Oh, how the tables had turned. You weren’t the first to fall, that much is true, and you had managed to stay alive perhaps longer than you had expected in the beginning, but to go now, to go like this?

Poison is a coward’s weapon. You would have much rather been stabbed, nicely close and personal, and a lot quicker too. There was no changing fate now, though. Not in your current situation. Not now you’re coughing up blood in waves, not now you’re almost certain you feel your insides turning into liquid. There is no turning back from this and you know it.

Still, despite it all, it takes an awfully long time before your body finally decides to call it quits.

By the end, you are dressed in red, and the sky is crying.


	13. A hairy situation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Charlie.  
> Contains kidnapping, manipulation, unwilling transformation.  
> I would like to formally apologise to any _actual_ furries reading this in advance.

Human.

If anyone were to ask you what you were, that was your answer. Just a human dude that likes fishing. That was all. Nothing particularly special.

And yet, to some that was unacceptable. They thought you were hiding something behind a mask of normalcy. That you were something more than that. You had been suspected of it, of course, everyone had at one point or another, but unlike with others, with you they actually had something to pin you down.

If only you had never made that stupid drawing.

Just once you had slipped up. Just once had you drawn yourself as something different than just a simple human person. It had been a joke, then, but those chasing you were relentless. In their eyes, it was the ultimate truth behind the lie. To them, it was a cry for help.

And help you they would.

It was in the middle of the night when they lifted you out of your bed, shoving you into a shulker box and taking you with them. You had tried to escape, of course, because what else were you supposed to do? The strangers hadn’t bothered in the slightest to tell you who they were or what they wanted from you, and despite how grey your skin was these days, you were not about to let someone try to kill you again.

Still, they must’ve put something on top of the box, or had forced it closed in some other way, because you weren’t able to keep it open.

“Hey! Let me out! I don’t know what you want but you’re making a mistake!” You bonked your fist against the sides of the shulker, but no response came. Instead, you just felt the box slightly shifting as it was being moved with you inside of it.

\---

It felt like hours later when the box got opened again, and you had to shield your eyes from the sterile white light that shone in.

“What-” you began, but you were quickly cut off by a voice.

“Don’t worry, Charlie, you are safe here. Here you can become what you truly are.”

You didn’t recognise the voice, and for the first time, you looked around. The room you were in was as sterile as the light, with tiled walls and a shiny floor. It was all white, so white. You saw a machine standing against one of the walls, metal parts reflecting the lights and a chamber surrounded by glass in the middle of it. You saw restraints hanging from the walls of that glass chamber, and you very quickly decided that you did _not_ want to know what the machine was for. Instead, your eyes kept searching, scanning the room for a way out.

The trouble wasn’t that there wasn’t a door to the room. The trouble was the people that were standing between you and that plate of metal that meant freedom.

People in animal suits.

People wearing full face masks, hiding their identity behind unnaturally coloured fur and too big eyes. Their bodies were entirely wrapped in fur too, in most cases. One of them looked like a dragon, scales and all, and another looked more like a crow, including the feathers. The one thing they all had in common were the lab coats worn over their suits.

Internally, you were debating whether you were dreaming, and this was just your brain’s sick idea of a nightmare. You really hoped it was just a dream.

Sadly, a quick pinch of your arm showed that you weren’t quite sleeping.

“Who the hell are you and where the hell am I?” you asked as you stood up from your shulker, your legs stiff from the time you had been in there. If you had wanted to look intimidating, you were off to a great start, except not really. You stood swaying on your legs as you felt blood return to them, and you had to hold the edge of the shulker to not fall over.

The animals – you _really_ didn’t want to have to call them furries – looked at each other, before the crow one stepped forwards, spreading their arms as though they wanted to give you a hug.

“Welcome, welcome brother! We are the Furry Liberation Front, and we are here to help you! We noticed your cry for aid, and we can’t well leave one of our own alone, now can we?”

Whatever you were expecting, it wasn’t this.

“You… What? No, I’m not-” you started stammering, your eyes once again finding the door.

“If you weren’t, then why did you make that drawing? We recognise one of us when we see them, even if they themselves might still be in denial.”

Honestly, the crow didn’t even sound evil, but with how overtly friendly they were… It did little to make you feel better. It didn’t help that the animals were slowly coming closer to you, all with a perpetually happy expression on their masks. You stepped out of the box, moving slowly backwards and away from them.

“No, this is a mistake, I _swear_ I’m not a furry, that drawing was a joke, a _joke_ I tell you.”

You were sure you heard the person in the dragon suit laugh heartily, though it was hard to say with how unmoving their mouth was.

“Don’t we all tell ourselves that, in the beginning? It always just starts with a joke, with a single piece to spark it. But don’t worry, we can bring you the rest of the way.”

This person too just sounded _nice_ , but you didn’t like the hidden tone in their voice.

“No thanks, I better just go, before-”

“Siblings, the denial is strong in this one. Let us change that. Let us show him his true destiny,” the crow spoke, nodding to the other animals, and they started moving towards you faster now. You took that as your cue to move backwards as well, keeping as much distance as you could, but it didn’t take long before you felt a wall against your back. Like true pack hunters, the animals had gone and fanned out, blocking your every way out, and still they were coming for you.

“Come on, guys, I’m not- I don’t want to be a furry. That’s not me. Please. Just let me go? I just want to go home!” you pleaded, but it was like your pleas once again fell on deaf ears. The animals bridged the last few meters between you and them, grabbing your arms and your legs and lifting you off the ground despite your attempts to free yourself.

Suffice to say that combat had never been your strong suit, and you were not strong enough on your own to defeat multiple other people. As such, you kept asking for them to let you go, then threatening to call in a Watcher if they didn’t stop, and finally you tried bargaining, promising to draw a few more of those drawings if only they let you go right there and then. The animals didn’t care, though, and carried you towards the machine.

The crow walked in front, opening the glass door before starting to flip some switches and click some buttons in the machine casing. The closer you got to it, the more desperate you got, but not to any avail. The dragon reached into the chamber, pulling out what looked like a single manacle connected to some kind of thick wire and securing it around your left wrist. Then came the next one, and before you could move your hand out of the way, they had secured it around your right wrist. The same process followed for both your ankles, and the dragon nodded to the crow. Another pair of buttons were clicked, and you heard the machine whirring to life, pulling on the manacles with a strong but constant pull, almost as though the wire was being reeled in.

It didn’t matter how much you tried to get out, the wires retracted further and further, and while they seemed to retract faster when you moved backwards into the machine, they didn’t budge a millimetre in the opposite direction. It didn’t help that the animals were pushing you backwards too, and it didn’t take long before you felt your ankles and wrists hitting the back wall of the chamber. Still, that apparently wasn’t enough, and the animals cleared way to let the dragon secure additional restraints in the shape of metal bands around your upper legs, chest, neck, and head. You knew you wouldn’t be able to get out, even if you tried.

“You guys are making a mistake, I’m not a furry, please, I’m not!”

“You know deep in your heart that that isn’t true, brother. Just give in to your true nature, and everything will be fine,” the dragon spoke, patting you on the shoulder. You really whished they wouldn’t have.

Still, as he moved away, you started struggling against your bonds, struggling and yelling and screaming for them to stop whatever they were doing, to let you out, to let you go, to stop this nonsense. The only response you got were those same unmoving expressions, those same happy smiles as the dragon closed the glass door.

Moments later, you heard it seal, the sounds coming from outside of the machine instantly being muffled. Still, you screamed, you begged, you pleaded, you did just about everything you could imagine that could possibly make them change their mind. Not that it worked particularly well, and it was frustrating, so frustrating, why wouldn’t they listen to you? Why didn’t they believe you when you said you weren’t a furry? Tears welled up in your eyes as you heard the machine start to do stuff, although you weren’t sure what exactly it was.

Then you heard the sound of air hissing, and as you looked down, you saw how clouds of magenta and cyan gas were appearing at the very bottom of the chamber. The clouds rose fast, replacing the available air as they went up, and you felt yourself falling into a panic.

_What are they- No. No, no, no, no, can I breathe that? I need to breathe something, but not that, please, not that, just air, just air!_

Your breathing became shallower and shallower as you saw the gas enveloping you, raising higher and higher and higher. At the last possible moment, you took a large gasp of normal air, and then it was in front of your face as well. You just hoped, you just really hoped that it would be enough to get you through, that the gas would be gone before your air supply ran out.

An idle hope, you discovered about a minute later. Your lungs were burning, but everything around you was coloured, and you just couldn’t hold your breath any longer. That was the point where your reflexes took over from your brain, and you let go of the precious, precious oxygen in your system. You breathed in, and the sweet gas filled your lungs.

It didn’t take long before you felt yourself becoming more and more drowsy, and only a few breaths afterwards, you fell asleep.

\---

Waking up was strange. It felt like your vision had changed, somehow, being more limited around the edges. At the same time, you had never felt so comfortable in your life. You were nice and warm and you just felt so _happy_ and _yourself_. You looked up, seeing a crow and a dragon you vaguely recognised standing in front of you, behind a layer of glass still, it seemed.

Where did you know them from? Where had you seen them earlier? Your mind was still a bit fuzzy, having just woken up. You also weren’t too sure where you were, but once you started trying to look and move around, it all came rushing back, very much helped by the fact that there were still restraints around various bits of your body.

It didn’t matter too much, though, you know why they were there, why they had been necessary. You knew that it had been for the better.

As such, when the crow opened the door, and the dragon leaned in to free you from the restraints, you didn’t struggle. You didn’t yell at them, you didn’t shout, nothing, you just _were_. The dragon lent you a hand to help you step outside of the machine, and they lead you to a part of the room you hadn’t paid attention to before.

A large mirror spanned the height of the room, and you almost didn’t recognise yourself as you looked into it. In front of you stood someone in a beautiful animal suit. It resembled a dog, one of those Bernese Mountain Dogs to be precise, except instead of white and ginger fur, those patches were cyan and magenta now. The black parts were simply the same colour as your hair was, and somehow, the colour scheme felt fitting. Plus, you still had your hat, which was a good thing. You smiled at your reflection, and you knew this was good. This was who you were, and if anyone would ever ask you what you were, you had your answer ready.

Furry.


	14. Recharge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Antonka from Chair.  
> Contains a housefire and electrocution.

You had come back to your base after you had made your hits for the day. It was exhausting, and it asked a whole lot from your system, especially power-wise. As such, it was _essential_ for you to go and recharge yourself in times like these.

As with updating, you knew you would be vulnerable during a recharge. You couldn’t easily go anywhere, and it was generally easier to enter a standby mode and just wait for your internal battery sensors to wake you up when you were full again. And in standby mode your general sensors for proximity detection, sound detection and movement detection were mostly inactive, save for a very regular pattern of scans that happened every five minutes. Those were mostly to make sure that it was still safe to continue charging, but a lot could happen in five minutes.

Especially with killers on the loose. Killers like yourself, true, but there were others and you knew it. You hadn’t run into too many of them, but you knew they were out there, and eventually, you would get a target on your back regardless of what you did.

Still, after locking the doors and checking all hiding spots in the room, you found it safe enough to go ahead and hop on your charging pad. You felt the familiar tickle of electricity go through you as you connected, and the recharge started. Almost instantly, your screen went from lit-up purple to a black with your logo bouncing around it by means of a screensaver. It was going to go well.

You continued thinking it was going well up until the point where it wasn’t, when the surge of power that went in suddenly became a whole lot stronger than it was supposed to be. Instead of the gentle trickle of mains voltage, it felt as though you were touching a high voltage line, and your circuitry did not like that in the slightest.

It showed exactly how little it liked that by melting through in various places, both at the places where it was supposed to and in places it most certainly wasn’t. You woke up to various blaring internal alarms, telling you exactly what the damage was, and predicting exactly how screwed you were.

The answer was _very much so_. While part of your circuitry had already gone, there was still quite some left, and the high voltage hadn’t stopped coming through. Instead, you felt more and more parts of you shut down, appendages hanging limply as the servomotors that were supposed to control them burnt through. Your body was shaking with the voltage, but you couldn’t get yourself to move away from the platform. Your legs simply wouldn’t listen to you, not anymore.

At the very least you managed to partially get away from it when your internal stabilisers failed, and you tipped over without the usual constant adjustments to your stature and pose. You barreled towards the floor, happy to have something under you that didn’t try to electrocute you.

On the less optimal side, your metal casing had become very warm with the continuous stream of electricity flowing through it, and the wooden floor didn’t quite like that.

The fire it managed to spark, however… Well. The flames were all too happy to spread, finding more and more fuel and setting your base fully on fire.

Even if you could move, you weren’t sure if there was anything you could do to stop the fire from consuming your base with you in it. And as such, you didn’t. You simply hoped your backups would suffice to make a new and better version of you, sometime in the near future.

And then your systems went offline.


	15. A knife to a fistfight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Judas.  
> Contains blood, stabbing, and choking.

The fist hid you hard against the cheek, and you felt your skin split where the metal gauntlet had touched it. You let out a grunt as you stumbled backwards, raising your own fists in self-defence. You were panting and bruised, you were pretty sure your nose was broken, and one of your ribs wasn’t feeling too good either. Still, you stood, ready to fight for your right to live. You were not about to let Fluid beat you into a pulp.

Or, well, actually, you were not about to let them beat you _further_ into a pulp. That was what you had been telling yourself for the past ten minutes, while they were most definitely causing more damage to you than vice versa.

How were you supposed to win this? They were in what seemed like full metal armour, while you just had your leather jacket and a pair of studded gloves. You had been forced to drop your pocketknife earlier, and you were still trying to get to it, to circle around Fluid and get a little bit of an edge again. Of course, you weren’t entirely sure how a small knife was going to win against armour, but you did see a few places that seemed to be covered by fabric and not by metal. It was something.

Something you could perhaps manage to use to your own advantage, with a little bit of luck. Sure, you may never have had any proper training, you still knew how to throw a mean punch, and you still knew a thing or two about knife fighting. Those were just things you learnt out on the streets.

You feigned a dodge to the left, pushing yourself off to the right to circle around them, but you were met with a kick to your flank that knocked the wind out of you instead. It was almost immediately followed by a slash towards your neck, but you were just in time to block it, the sharp metal nails skidding mostly harmlessly over the leather of your sleeve, only leaving the smallest of cuts. Leather was tough, after all.

Still, you made use of the moment to grab hold of their wrist, pulling them closer as you planted a fist right underneath their chin.

You really hoped it had hurt them more than it had hurt you, because your hand didn’t in the slightest appreciate being smacked against metal for the umpteenth time. Much to your enjoyment, you heard them grunt in annoyance in response, which you chalked down as a point for you.

At the same time, you were sure you saw the eyes in the helmet glow up, and you immediately started questioning whether it had been a good idea. Then again, right now any idea that would keep you alive just a little bit longer seemed like a good idea, and figuring out a way to hurt them back seemed like it would logically fall in that category.

Still, you didn’t have time to think. You needed to get to your knife. Still holding their wrist, you raised up your hand, stepping underneath Fluid’s arm and turning around, before letting go, throwing a quick punch towards where their kidneys supposedly were, and sprinting towards your knife. You hoped it would buy you enough time. It had to.

Their footsteps were right behind you though, closing in until you didn’t hear them for a moment. A split second later, you felt how they crashed against your back, wrapping an arm around your neck, and before you knew it you were falling on the ground. The knife was about a meter away, but they were on your back, pinning you down with their knees while they increased the pressure on your throat. You realised what they were doing and took a quick breath, to buy yourself at least a little bit of time to get them off of you.

You hooked the fingers of your left hand around their wrist, pulling it down as far as you could manage, to give yourself a little bit of breathing space, while you reached for you knife with the other hand. That was the plan, in any case. You couldn’t quit get the arm away from your throat, and while the pressure wasn’t increasing anymore, you knew that it wasn’t enough to allow you to breathe.

Meanwhile, your other hand fell just short of brushing past your knife, and you felt panic starting in your brain. You knew you didn’t have time for that, though. Panic would diminish your already small chance at life. Panic would make you do dumb things out of self-preservation. You struggled to keep your thoughts in check as you reached out further, stretching your arm as far as you could and trying to push yourself ever so slightly forwards with your legs.

This time, you felt the handle underneath your fingers, and you saw a little bit of hope on the horizon while Fluid kept trying to choke the life out of you. When you finally managed to grasp the pocketknife, you didn’t even think as to what to do next. There was a little bit of unprotected arm near the elbows, and you were pretty sure of one bit of elbow that was not about to move.

And so you stabbed them, the blade first biting into metal but quickly gliding of into something softer. Something squishier. Something that actually managed to hurt them, judging by the sounds Fluid was making. Still, they were holding on, and you saw the edges of your vision becoming darker and darker.

This was not how you planned on dying, though. Not at all.

With that in mind, you stabbed again, and again, and only then did they unwrap their arm. You made use of the movement by pulling your arms underneath you and pushing yourself upwards, trying to shake Fluid from your back.

It worked only partially, though, as they in turn figured out a way to bend the action to their own advantage. They shifted one knee to be on the ground instead, pushing you over to your back with the other one and a hand. You immediately tried to apply some more stabbing, except this time they saw it coming, managing to catch your wrist just in time. Their grasp was strong, and you felt their nails digging into your wrist, drawing blood, but you didn’t let go of your knife, not again. Not now that you had it back.

They shifted again, planting their knees firmly onto your upper arms and pinning them down. With their free hand, they then proceeded to punch you in the face, again and again. You felt skin split, and you knew that if your nose hadn’t been broken before, it would be broken now. You grunted and struggled to get away from there, but not to any avail. They simply weren’t letting you.

Their next punch broke your jaw, then your cheekbone, and you were pretty sure that you felt teeth shifting in your mouth. Your eyelids were already swelling up, and gods, the pain was quickly becoming too much to bear. Still, you didn’t give up. That wasn’t you.

No, you fought until the bitter end, trying to use your legs to kick them, or to switch your position enough to roll out from underneath them.

You fought until their nails had torn through the muscles in your wrists, and your knife had clattered to the ground.

You fought until they had broken what felt like every bone in your face, and then some more.

You fought until you were coughing up blood, steady streams trickling down from multiple wounds.

You fought until they had picked up your knife, raking it over the unprotected skin of your neck.

You fought until your breath ran out, until you were laying in a pool of your own blood.

You fought until they moved backwards a little, to make some room for one last blow.

And when they plunged your own knife into your heart, you finally stopped.


	16. Judge, jury, executioner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Liz.  
> Contains blood, gore, executions, and graphic descriptions of flaying.

The table you were laying on was uncomfortable to say the least, not in the slightest helped by the coarse ropes that pulled your limbs tautly towards the corners. You already felt the strain on your shoulders, hips, and spine. Still, it didn’t seem like you were going to be stretched to death, at the very least. You were quite certain something some equipment was missing for that. What _was_ going to happen, though, you had no idea about. You had spotted some wheels at the end of the table legs as well as a large door on one end of the room when they had brought you in here, and those were about the only hints you had.

A small part of you still hoped you would get out of this alive, but an increasingly large part of you was convinced that whatever this was, it would end in your death. It kind of _had_ to, now didn’t it? You didn’t like the thought in the slightest, but there was little you could do to change it. You couldn’t quite reach the knots in the ropes around your wrists, and they were bound too tight to be able to slip out. The most you could do was wiggle around pathetically and think. Think and hope that someone would come in to save you in time. One of the Watchers, or one of the other Listeners, maybe? If only they knew where you were.

It felt like hours later that someone finally came in, though it might well have been simply a few minutes. You stretched your neck to look over your shoulder when you heard their footsteps, and it was a little bit of a relief to realise you actually knew the person. You recognised those wings; you knew those large bat-like ears.

“Tonk? Is that you? Thank the Watchers! Come on, untie me, before they come back!” you said, trying to sound calm and collected, but a quiver in your voice undermined that attempt. In response, Antonka simply smiled, baring her teeth.

“I’m sorry, Liz, but _why_ would I do that, exactly?”

The words stung like daggers in your heart when you realised she was part of _them_ , part of the people that had taken you in the first place. Still, you _had_ to try, there was always the chance that she hadn’t completely betrayed you.

“Because… Because you’re my friend! Friends help each other, don’t they?” you tried, but it only made Antonka laugh.

“That time is long past.”

Without another word, she walked up to the table, unblocking the wheels before rolling it towards the large door at the end of the room. As you got closer to it, you heard muffled sounds coming from outside, yelling and laughing and chanting and a low-pitched scream that grew louder and louder until it suddenly cut out.

Sounds you didn’t like one bit. Actually, there was much about this situation that you didn’t like, but it wasn’t like there was much you could do to stop it.

“Ah, sounds like it’s your turn, Liz.”

“My turn for _what_?” you asked, and Antonka looked at you.

“To die, of course! Hadn’t you guessed?”

You swallowed as the reality of the situation dawned on you. You didn’t want to die. You really didn’t.

“Please, Tonk, it doesn’t have to be like this. Please, just… Just let me go, okay? No one has to know.”

One last time, the bat person looked you straight into the eyes.

“That’s not my call to make.”

Then she walked around the table and towards the door. She knocked three times, and you heard the sound of metal grating over wood before the doors opened up.

Outside was a crowd, flanking both sides of a path towards a small podium. There had to be hundreds of them, both faces you recognised and faces you didn’t, and you had to force down tears as you realised they had all come to watch you die. Or well, maybe not you specifically. You were just about able to see people wheeling what looked like another table like the one you were laying on away from the podium, and you were sure there was a body on there.

Once more, you tried wiggling free of your bonds, apparently much to the amusement of the people watching you be rolled outside. You could see Missie standing there, the static on her screen lighter and more active than you had ever seen before, her body shocking with soundless laughter. A bit further on was Alveo, popping bits of popcorn into xer mouth as you passed by xem, their many eyes twinkling with delight.

You passed more and more faces, some familiar, some not, all somewhere on a scale of being amused to being overtly hostile towards you. Some were chanting your name, some were chanting ‘KILL!’, some spat in your direction, some chanted a more general ‘DEATH TO THE LISTENERS!’. You grew more uncomfortable with each meter you were moved closer to the stage, and you were almost certain your shakiness was visible for all to see. Then again, could they _really_ expect you to be calm in the face of your coming death? You weren’t even sure what you had done to deserve it.

On the one hand, you wanted to plead with Antonka to let you go, to just stop wheeling you towards your demise, but at the same time, you already knew that it was pointless. Even _if_ you somehow managed to convince her to stop, you didn’t doubt that someone else would simply take her place. No, the time for begging and pleading was over. You just had to be brave, you just had to keep telling yourself one of the Watchers would swing in at the last moment to save you. They had to. They simply had to. After all, why would they leave a Listener to be publicly executed?

The answer to that question became abundantly clear when you saw exactly who were on the podium. You recognised Roxy’s dress from a distance, glimmering brightly even in the daylight. Lops was standing next to her, fixing his bow tie, while Xone was leaning on his trident. All were dressed in their full Watcher regalia too, so you knew this was something serious.

You felt your heart drop to your stomach. It didn’t make sense, it really didn’t. You had done your tasks, you had submitted your reports, you had followed your training, what more could they expect of you?

In that moment, you felt very happy that you were wearing a mask. It hid the betrayal that was oh so evident on your face, and it made it at least a little bit easier to cry without it being seen. You averted your eyes from those you had once looked up to, instead opting to try and find a friendly face in the crowd. Your eyes found a purple slime, and you recognised Ash. They looked nice enough, if it weren’t for the new buttons on their dungarees. Buttons that displayed your face, as well as those of the other Listeners, all crossed out in red.

Not a friendly face after all, then.

A bit further on you recognised a familiar blue mask and bluer hair, and while you couldn’t see her eyes, you were sure Cloud was looking at you, a sadistic grin on her lips. Her head turned along as you were wheeled past her, and your eyes quickly skipped to the next person, anything to not have to look at the Watchers.

You found another person with a screen over their head, leaning on a shield painted in the colours of a nonbinary flag, and you recognised Terebi in them. Contrary to Missie’s screen, though, theirs had the words ‘Die, Liz, Die!’ and ‘Ha Ha Ha Ha’ scrolling over it, and you decided to just look away once more, instead looking up to the sky high above you. You tried to tune out the shouting and chanting around you, trying to have a last good moment before your life would inevitably end. Of course, it was all relative, but you could still try.

It was an overcast day, the grey clouds threatening rain. Birds flew over, and you wished you could be like them, free to fly far away from this place, not bound to the earth. Free to find a new home, free to find new friends.

Friends that wouldn’t stab you in the back the moment you turned it to them.

Your musings were interrupted when the table hit a ramp, a shock going through the thing as you were pushed onto the stage for all to see. The Watchers were standing there, just looking at you, and you wished they hadn’t. You could see something you could _almost_ call sadness in their eyes, something that just _bordered_ on remorse, as though they didn’t want to be doing this either, but you had to really search for it. For the most part, their faces didn’t show any emotion as the table was brought to a halt right in front of them.

Then, Xone of all people stepped forwards, and the crowd went quiet.

He looked you straight in the eyes, and much as you wanted to look away, you found that you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You had served under him, you were his apprentice, and now…

“Liz Zardii! For crimes against your Watchers and fellow Listeners, I hereby sentence you to death by flaying. Any last words?”

You felt your heart shatter into pieces, breaking more and more apart with each word he said. Crimes? You? You were actually stumped for words. You weren’t sure what he was talking about, and now you were going to _die_ because of something you didn’t even do?

“I… This has to be a mistake. Please, I would never- I’m innocent, Xone, I’m innocent, I swear I’m innocent! Roxy, Lops, please, you _know_ me, I-” you sobbed, unable to finish your sentence. Xone bent forwards, making eye contact with you.

“I know,” he whispered, before removing your mask and the little patch on your belt that showed your status. Had your heart had any unbroken part left, this would have crushed it, but alas. This was just a last droplet in an already overflowing bucket.

Finally, finally, you managed to tear your eyes away from him, moving them over the crowd once more. They were chanting again, frantically calling for your death. You recognised Welp and Ent, both once friends, but right now they seemed like they just wanted to see blood. What lies had they been fed? What had happened that was forcing even the Watchers to play along, even though at least one of them knew of your innocence? You would never know.

Another person approached the stage, this time from the other side. They were dressed in armour of green, gold, and silver, four pairs of glowing eyes staring at you from a helmet that was as expressionless as your own mask had been. You had met them before, you knew their name, but that was about everything you had on them. Fluid.

They were carrying a leather roll, of sorts, and without saying a word to you they approached the side of the table, where they rolled out the leather. It revealed a multitude of knives, some smaller, some larger, but all held that same wicked edge.

You knew what they were for, and your eyes found the Watchers once more. Lops was trying to dodge eye contact, whereas Roxy wasn’t even trying to hide the twenty eyes opening up all over her face. And Xone… Well. He just looked over you, before shifting his focus to the executioner.

“Begin.”

Would the other two Watchers too have had to do that? Had they too sentenced their own Listener to death? Had they too watched how a knife was drawn, only to be dragged over and through skin with surgical precision? Had Charlie and Lucky laid here too, panic rising within them as they felt pain blossom in their hand as Fluid had cut into it?

Had they, too, cried out, or had they managed to keep in a scream as they felt the skin being slowly peeled away from them?

You knew at least one of them hadn’t, but you would never know who.

With each cut, with each bit of skin peeled away, your arm felt more and more on fire as nerve endings were left exposed, and soon your world just spiralled into nothing but pain.

You heard sounds coming from outside, you heard the crowd yelling and chanting and shouting, but their words no longer registered, and it was all you could do to keep your eyes on the Watchers, to make sure they saw the consequences of their words, to make sure they were watching as you suffered.

They became blurry, so blurry as tears welled up in your eyes, but you had no way to wipe those away, and you weren’t sure if you were screaming or crying or begging for it to stop or all three of them. Still, the knife was unrelenting, and you felt it separating your skin from your muscles and bones cut by cut, keeping it in one piece as much as possible.

You wondered how much skin you would have to lose, how much of your blood had to drip down onto the stage, how much pain you would have to go through before your body would finally give out.

Probably much more than you would like.

Time ticked by slowly as blood kept trickling down your wrist and arm, and your throat slowly but surely grew sore. It hurt to bring forth any sounds, but at the same time, that pain was _nothing_ compared to your arm. Those nerves kept firing with every little movement, with every little gust that blew over them, with every small thing that touched them. It felt like pins and needles, except that those pins and needles were also on fire but also ice cold at the same time. And then that feeling multiplied by about a thousand.

Still, everything had to come to an end, even bad things, and about ten excruciating minutes later, you felt one last incision before Fluid stepped into view, handing the still-bleeding skin of your left arm over to Roxy. Then they turned to you again, and you made a weak attempt to get away. It wasn’t very fruitless, to say the least, and they grabbed your wrist, pressing it down on the table to stop you from moving too much.

You stifled a sob as they continued cutting again, that now-familiar pain starting to spread in your right hand as well. Wouldn’t it be easier to just kill you? What crime had you been found guilty of, that the Watchers had opted for torture instead of just tossing you in the Void, as was customary? What happened that had called for the need of a spectacle of these proportions?

You blinked away tears, your eyes meeting Xone’s once more. You knew he had the power to call this off, you knew it would take just a single word, and you knew that he knew too. And yet, he didn’t.

He just let you scream on and on and on until Fluid finally made a last incision on your right arm too, taking the skin and handing it to Lops. He almost visibly recoiled from it, but still accepted it, and you noticed how the hands of the watchers were stained with more blood than just yours.

And then Fluid returned, taking a different knife from their collection. This time, they stood at the head of the table, and in your gut you already knew what would be next. They had already taken your hands and arms, it only made sense that they would take your face too, and there was nothing you could do to stop it.

Nevertheless, you struggled, trying to break out of your restraints as wave after wave of pain shot through your arms. Your face was _yours_ , you didn’t _want_ them to cut it off, you really didn’t.

Around you, the crowd cheered, but not for you. No, they cheered for the one now hanging over you, for the one grabbing your chin and turning it to the side, for the one holding your face down with their gauntlet as they started cutting near your ear.

You heard every bit as they systematically went around the edges before starting to peel, pulling back the skin and carefully cutting it away from the muscles.

This was a whole new world of pain, compared to your arms. Now salty tears flowed into the brand-new wounds, now blood found its way into your eyes.

Now you could see what was happening.

And for the first time since this torment had begun, you felt the need to be silent, afraid of what damage a sudden movement would cause. On the other side, how much did it matter in the end? You were going to die anyway, you were going to be in pain anyway, but you were still not about to make your experience worse.

It was only when Fluid turned your head to the other side that you started feeling cold. At the same time, you felt like you were sweating profusely, and your breathing got more and more shallow. Your blinking seemed to take longer and longer, and you revelled in those little moments of unconsciousness before unavoidably being pulled back into reality again.

At some point, you had started screaming again as well, although you weren’t sure when or why. You just knew you had. Not that it seemed like Fluid cared particularly much, they just kept cutting and peeling, cutting and peeling.

Your vision had turned red with your own blood, and you own peeled-off skin blocked part of your field of view, but still you tried to find Xone, to look at him, to try and convince him with just your eyes and your scream to make it all stop, to just _please_ end it but he didn’t seem to get it, he just stood there, staring back at you as you felt the knife moving near your eyes.

_Make it stop make it stop please make it stop I can’t I can’t I can’t_

The pain intensified until everything went black and it was no longer there, and some time later you woke up again with the executioner making the last few cuts near your lips. Then, without warning, they pulled at the piece they had cut loose so far, ripping the last connected bit clean off.

You screamed, you screamed so loud, but it didn’t do anything to stop or lower the pain, it just burnt and burnt and burnt and with every little movement your face made it only hurt more and more and more.

You felt light in your head when Fluid finally stepped away from you and towards your Watcher, handing him your face. Tears stung as they streamed from your eyes, and you found your breathing moving even higher into your lungs until you were _sure_ you weren’t getting any oxygen out of it anymore. Your heart beat so fast it felt like it was trying to dig its way out of your chest, and you felt blood pouring out of your wounds in time with it.

Around you, the world burst out into cheering, loud voices rejoicing the completion of the sentence.

Not you, though.

You looked as a single tear dripped from Xone’s eye, before your heart gave out and you lost consciousness for good.

It was over.

It was finally over.


	17. Chemical warfare

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Missie.  
> Contains gore but for plants.

You had been enjoying life in your flower forest a lot, lately. It felt good to be in nature, and it was even better that there was enough wildlife around that you could grow through, that you could absorb the nutrients from. You always felt stronger, there.

That fateful day, you had been picking flowers and shoving them between your body and your vines in order to adorn yourself. There was no real _reason_ for it, it wasn’t like you could particularly see yourself, and you weren’t really expecting anyone either, but it made you feel good and that was what counted. Besides, it smelt nice, the flowery cocktail of chemicals in the air around you. You could pick out all the different ones, and you enjoyed figuring out a unique fragrance to hang around you and to cover up the stench of your rotting body.

At some point, however, you noticed a smell that wasn’t part of the bouquet that surrounded you.

A smell that seared and burnt.

Not smoke, not fire, no, something else.

Something worse.

You felt some of your vines shrinking and shrivelling, and you turned around to the direction it had come from. Clouds of noxious green were rolling through the landscape, and you noticed how flowers and vines in their paths wilted away, their lives going up in the air with a last excretion of pheromones.

You knew what those meant.

The plants were panicking and dying and there was nothing you could do to stop it. The clouds just rolled on, oblivious to the destruction they were causing, and they were headed straight towards you.

You knew you had to get out of there. After all, were you not a plant yourself? You could stand your ground when fired at, you could survive your body being torn to bits, you could get over drowning, but this?

You knew that despite it all, you were simply a bunch of vines that had happened to stumble into sentience some way or another. You knew that despite it all, things that killed plants would also kill you.

You turned once more, trying to puppeteer your body away from the threat, your feet stumbling over the ground in a grotesque attempt at mimicking normal human walking motions. Despite having had this body for a while now, you still hadn’t gotten the hang of the finer motor functions, but at that moment, you didn’t really care for how it looked.

You cared for getting away from there. You cared for staying alive.

You should probably also have cared for tree roots in the way, as your foot got caught under one, and you felt your entire body careening to the ground, crashing into it with a smack. The smell of the cloud was getting stronger and stronger as it continuously crept up on you, and you felt more and more of your vines expressing their inability to handle even the trace amounts that were in the sky.

The vines in your legs were the first to go, even as you desperately tried to crawl further forwards, getting caught in the toxic smoke. You felt them shrivelling up, you felt them dying, you felt how the cells inside of them broke down one by one. And still, the cloud crept forwards, dizzying your senses, simply overloading your receptors with input.

The smell was so heavy now, you could barely even think as you reached forwards, trying to grasp something, anything, to keep moving on as you felt more and more of you die off.

At the very least it was a quick way to go, you knew that, but even then… You didn’t want to go, and why would you? You had so much to live for still. You had so much you still wanted to do. You had so many reasons to not want to die, and yet… Here you were. The cloud was surrounding your chest now, and it was getting increasingly harder to focus on anything except the feeling of the life slowly being drained out of you, cell bursting open, pheromones in the air. It would be over the moment it hit your roots, you knew that, and right there and then you didn’t know whether it was a blessing or a curse that they were protected by skull and screen.

Maybe, just maybe, it would give you a chance to survive. Or maybe it would only serve to prolong your suffering. Only time would tell, but you didn’t know which of the two you would prefer. Would all the pain be worth surviving? Or was it better to just cease to exist?

Whichever it was, all thoughts stopped when the green cloud wrapped around your head, killing the grass you were laying on and the vines outside your screen. The static on there was dark, so dark, as you did one last desperate attempt to get out.

Not to much fruition, sadly enough. Your arms refused to cooperate, the vines controlling them dead at the shoulder, and what little control you still had wasn’t enough to pull your weight out of there. Your vines wilted and slunk away, and where they did, you felt the weedkiller flow into your screen, following the dead remains of what had once been you until they reached the roots.

Your roots. The last thing keeping you alive.

No matter what pheromones you excreted, the cloud did not care. It just continued on its merry way, sapping the life out of you with every centimetre of root it touched. Your consciousness faded along with the wilting, and it didn’t take long before a darkness overtook you.

You went on to the next stage of your life, laying in that wilted flower forest to serve as the food for others stronger and more alive than you.

It was only fair, wasn’t it?


	18. Feeding the fishes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Spelle.  
> Contains kidnapping and drowning.

The night was not something you feared, not in the slightest. You would go out on the streets after dark rather than in the light, as most of your business took place in the shadows. In the beginning, you would bring protection wherever you had gone, but over the weeks and months you had grown… Cocky. Careless.

Oh, you in your high tower, how you looked down on the people below. How you thought you were invincible, untouchable, unkillable, how you thought no one would even dare lay a finger on you. After all, you had your mafia to protect you, your mafia to avenge you, your mafia to take out any target that had the bad luck to be caught in your crosshairs.

And that’s how you found yourself walking into a dark alley all by yourself. Sure, you had your gun with you, but that was more for show than anything else. You had a meeting with a potential benefactor, and you didn’t think someone that had already stepped forwards to help you would suddenly turn against you.

When you arrived, though, there was no one there. No one you could see, at the very least. You warily looked around, searching for movement of some sort, before taking out your communicator. You didn’t like people that wasted your time, benefactor or not, and you were going to tell them that.

At least, that was the plan. It was rudely interrupted by a pipe hitting you at the back of your head. The last thing you saw before slipping into unconsciousness were your communicator skipping over the rough cobblestone of the floor, and the walls being lit up by shifting lights in all colours of the galaxy.

\---

To say you had a headache when you woke up again would be an understatement. Your head was throbbing, but as you reached out to feel it you realised you couldn’t. Your hands were tightly bound on your back, and you figured out the darkness around you wasn’t because of a lack of light, but because someone had pulled a sack of thick cloth over your head.

You tried calling out, but the only sounds that exited your mouth were muffled by a gag, and for the first time you started regretting not telling anyone where you would be going. It could take hours before someone would even notice that something had gone awry, and that time… You were afraid that you might not live long enough for them to find you.

_Don’t panic, now. There has to be a way out. My gun! I might be able to shoot whoever is responsible for this! Oh, they’ll pay, they’ll pay for this! No one crosses the mafia._

Very systematically, you tried out your bonds, only to find that they had been expertly done. Yes, you could wiggle your arms a little bit, but you couldn’t move them far before more rope stopped you in your tracks. At the very least your legs were-

Nope. Sure, they were not bound with rope, but you felt something itchy and heavy enclosing your feet, ankles, and part of your lower legs. You would almost swear it was concrete, which… Well. It didn’t predict anything good in your future.

You knew what concrete was used for, especially in conjunction with the other items you had been adorned with by whoever had attacked you.

You knew you had to get out of there before you were brought to the river, because everything would be over once you got there. The trouble was, you had no idea how. You couldn’t call for help, you couldn’t reach anything useful, you couldn’t stand up, you couldn’t run. You were just laying there, on what felt like the floor of a moving van. The soft noises of a running engine pierced through the sack over your head, and every so often you felt the vehicle make a turn, shifting you ever so slightly to the right or left when it did.

You were not going to lie, the situation seemed pretty hopeless. Even so, you still tried to fight it, to figure out a way to break free. There simply _had_ to be one. At least, that’s what you kept telling yourself as you desperately tried to keep your cool.

It became a lot harder when the vehicle jerked to a halt, and you heard doors open. The vague sounds of the river came drifting in, and you knew it was too late. You had had your chance, and you had failed.

Someone grabbed you by the arms, then another, and together they dragged you to your concrete shoes, and then outside. You weren’t sure of how many of them there where, or who, but you hoped your mafia would figure that out. _You_ were the one doing the executions in this town, not whoever this was, and they would _know_ that.

You tried breaking free from the grasps, but the only thing that that resulted in were sharp, almost knife-like nails digging deeper into your arm, tearing your nice suit to shreds. It hurt, but you managed to keep in a yelp. If this was how you were going to go down, you would not give them the pleasure of seeing you panic or hurt. Still, you had to admit that as you were dragged further and further, and the texture under you changed from stone to wood, and the sound of flowing water grew louder, you actually did start to lose your cool a little bit.

Being head of the mafia didn’t mean you weren’t scared of dying.

At long last, you were put on the ground, after what felt like having been turned around. Then the bag was pulled from your head, and for the first time did you see your assailants. You recognised Fluid standing in front, their eight green eyes staring straight at you, and stood behind them were the other people from their crew. It wasn’t a group you had paid much attention to, and maybe that had been your first mistake.

You stared them down, one by one, before looking over your shoulder and underneath you. As you had thought, you were standing on the very edge of a pier, the water flowing underneath you. Water you probably wouldn’t be able to get out of once you got in there, not with your mafia-style new shoes.

“This is how it ends,” Fluid simply stated, before walking up to you and kicking you full in the chest. The momentum sent you backwards, into the water, and you felt yourself sinking fast. You didn’t even have time to take one last gasp of air before the water was all around you, and as you looked up you saw the same figures that had brought you here looking down on you.

You considered it a blessing that the water was so murky that you couldn’t see them anymore the moment your feet hit the bottom.

And then you waited. Your survival instincts made sure you kept your breath, at least for a little while, but eventually even that failed, and the reflex to gasp for air overtook you. Water flowed in instead of air, and briefly you wondered why you were surprised to feel it burning. Besides that, though, it felt relatively peaceful. You knew you didn’t have long anymore, but there was nothing you could do to either make it take longer or make it go quicker. This would just take the time it needed.

And as the oxygen in your blood slowly depleted, you felt your sight become blurry, before blotching into an inky black. Your panic receded into a strange feeling of peace, and for the first time that night you managed to relax a little.

And dying felt almost like falling asleep.


	19. A hard pill to swallow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself from Jamie.  
> Contains poisoning.

You had been surprised that they hadn’t noticed you as you snuck up to them, climbing onto the pile of mossy cobble behind them and reaching out to their head and neck. You had had the intention to snap it, and to end them right there and then, and the opportunity that had been basically handed to you was too good not to take.

Too good to be true, even.

You grabbed hold of them, but before you could act, you felt a hand enclosing your wrist.

“Hello there, Jamie.”

You felt your heart drop in your stomach, but tried to still go along with your plan. This could well be your last chance for that. You tried twisting their head to the side, which didn’t quite work with just a single hand, and you quickly saw the mistake in what you were doing. You should have waited for them to sleep, or be otherwise incapacitated.

Like this… This was not going to work.

Fluid grabbed your other hand too, and with a quick yank they pulled you out of balance, over their shoulder and onto the ground. You landed with a smack, your hat drifting down next to you.

You tried to move out of the way, but they were upon you faster than you had thought they would, pinning you down. Taking hold of their knees, you pushed as hard as you could, trying to get them off of you, but it didn’t work.

“Tsk. Pathethic.”

They grabbed your unprotected throat with one hand, their nails digging into your skin, as they raised their other hand to the armour on their upper arm. You were confused for a moment as to what they were doing, but you were a little bit too preoccupied by the hand currently trying to crush your windpipe to think too much about it.

You grabbed their wrist and actually managed to lift it ever so slightly, giving you a little bit more space to breathe. It wasn’t much, but it was _something_. Your attention shifted back to what they were doing with their other hand, just in time to see them pry one of those green gems out of an armplate.

Your gut told you that whatever it was, it wasn’t good. Not in the slightest. You struggled to get away, trashing your legs, pushing whatever you could push, but they were unrelenting.

“Open up that mouth of yours.”

They sounded amused, for some reason, but you simply refused to follow up any requests they might have. You liked living, thank you very much. They waited for a moment for you to do something, but when it became clear that you wouldn’t, Fluid shrugged and reached out to pinch your nose shut.

You knew damned well what that meant. Either you would open up your mouth on your own accord, or you would do so when your breathing reflex kicked in. You stared at them, your eyebrows furrowed together, liquid hate pooling in your eyes. Still, you opened up, and no sooner had you done that than they popped the gem in there and laid their hand over your mouth so you wouldn’t be able to get it out again.

The effect was almost immediate. You knew it _tasted_ wrong, bitter, _dangerous_ , but that wasn’t all. You felt how it dissolved in your mouth, and a numb feeling started spreading from there out to all corners of your body. It didn’t happen particularly slowly, either, but it left you enough time to think that perhaps it had been a bad idea to comply.

Above you, Fluid didn’t show any kind of emotion, just watching as the poison spread through your body. You felt how everything went numb, then stiff, and your heartrate became slower and slower and slower with every beat. You felt drowsy, and it became harder and harder to keep your eyes open, and to open them again after each blink.

Finally, finally Fluid removed their hands from you, and stepped aside. They looked around for something, but you couldn’t look around to see what it was. Your muscles simply didn’t want to.

A few seconds later, though, you saw how they stepped away, before coming back with your hat in their hands. Gentler than you would have expected of them they laid it on your stomach, then folded your hands over it. You felt your breathing slow down too, and tears welled in your eyes as you realised what would happen soon. There was nothing you could do about it, though.

“Fluid, I- I think I’m… Imma sleep now, kay?” you managed to mumble out, barely a sound leaving your mouth, and much to your surprise they nodded. Still, they stood there, until you finally slipped away into a warm and comfortable eternity.


	20. Everyone hates sand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Coffeewolf.  
> Contains dehydration, fata morgana's, and starvation.

Your feet dragged heavily through the scalding hot sand. The sun beat down heavily upon you, and you were sweating from just about every inch of your body. You knew it was bad to be losing even more liquid, but there was little you could do about it. You were completely and utterly lost in the desert, and your water had run out the day before already. Your food situation wasn’t looking too great, either, and if you weren’t going to come across either a town or an oasis soon, you were done for.

It was just that simple. Either the lack of water or the lack of food would get you, but it was probably going to be the water. It was already hard to keep your thoughts on track, to keep putting one foot in front of the other again and again and again. You had already stumbled and fallen a few times, the scalding sand burning your palms.

It didn’t help that everything here looked the same, with dune after dune after dune spreading out in the distance. Sure, you could see a dead three, here and there, but they were so battered by the winds that it was hard to differentiate between them. For all you knew, you might well have simply been walking in circles the whole time, and that was not something you hoped. Going in circles wouldn’t get you out of there.

Had you had the energy for it, you would have flown up in the sky to survey your surroundings, and to plot out your next move, but as things stood right now, that would be a monumentally bad idea. You already had trouble staying upright while walking over a flat bit of ground, there was no reason to add in a third dimension as well. Besides, if you made a mistake up there… You would plummet and fall, and you doubted that was healthy.

And so you walked, holding your wings stretched over your head as a rudimentary umbrella. It provided only a little bit of shade, but it was better than nothing.

You licked your lips, now chapped and dry, in an attempt to relieve those a tiny bit as well. They tasted like sand and salt, and whatever little bit of spittle you had managed to deposit on them soon evaporated again. You knew you were fighting a pointless fight, but as long as you kept fighting, there was still a chance of survival. You couldn’t just give in, you couldn’t just give up.

You _had_ to keep trying.

You lifted your eyes from the sand right in front of you towards the distance, and you had to blink a few times before you registered what you were seeing.

It looked like a clear blue liquid had pooled in the sand, and you couldn’t quite believe your eyes. Water. It had to be water.

You sped up, more controlled falling forwards than walking at this point, all the while ignoring a nagging voice in your head that told you it was too good to be true. You just had to try it, on the off chance that it _was_ actually true.

For the first time in days, you smiled, though your breathing was harsh and shallow. For the first time in days, something could be going your way, actually helping you instead of sapping all energy out of you.

Imagine your disappointment when you arrived where the water should have been, to just find more sand. Only sand, not even damp sand or cooler sand or simply rocks or mud or dirt. Just sand.

Your smile faltered, and you sunk to your knees. This… You knew deep down that there really hadn’t been a chance for anything else, but you had still hoped, and now that hope had been crushed.

If you had any liquid left to cry with, you certainly would have, but your eyes stayed dry as you sobbed over the sand.


	21. Aww man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Erk.  
> Contains abandonment and explosions.

The rain came down in sheets around you as you ran over the plains, trying to find shelter for the storm. It had been such a nice and sunny day, and you had happily been exploring, finding new villages to trade with in the area. Nothing had indicated how much the weather would change, otherwise you would have probably delayed your trip a little, or you would have gone in a different direction.

Still, you were here now, desperately looking around for either some houses or the opening to a cave or perhaps even a tree to take cover under. There wasn’t anything there, though. Just more and more rolling plains, long grass hanging close to the ground with the torrent of rain crashing down onto it.

The sky was dark, the clouds being almost black, and if you didn’t know it was supposed to be around noon, you would have probably guessed it was somewhere in the evening, after sunset. The storm was impressively large, and no matter where on the horizon you looked, you couldn’t make out a single speckle of blue, and that was even _after_ you decided to put your goggles over your eyes to keep the rain out.

Then, a sudden flash illuminated the world around you, and the crash of thunder followed but seconds afterwards. It was loud, so loud, and you felt a shudder coursing through you. You didn’t like lightning. Not in the slightest. You knew what lightning could do to your kind, how much more volatile it could make them. And while you doubted you actually had the explosive capabilities that other creepers bolstered, the fear was still there that at some point it would just happen to you.

You sped up your pace as more and more lightning struck, the rumble of thunder filling the air and your ears and your mind. At some point, the running turned into fleeing, actually fleeing, until lightning reached down from the heavens to scorch the ground in front of you. You smelled the ozone in the air as fire ignited and was just as quickly put out by the rain again, and you scrambled to a halt. That was most definitely not the direction you would be going in.

And so you picked another, going more or less perpendicular to your previous path. It wasn’t the most efficient route to get to shelter, but at the very least it would take you away from the latest place where lightning struck as fast as possible.

Then again, it didn’t matter a lot where you ran. It didn’t take long before lightning was all around you, and you felt yourself falling into a panic. You didn’t want to be there. You really didn’t want to be there, you just wanted to find shelter, you just wanted to be warm and dry and safe and no longer alone and away from the lightning.

The weather had other plans though. You smelled ozone again, and before you could even look upwards you felt a bolt of white-hot energy entering your body through your back, and you fell to the ground. It felt like every nerve in your body was on fire, and your shirt as well. Your body spasmed as it found a place for all that energy to go, and you whimpered as a blue sheen overtook your skin.

“No!” you cried out as you realised what was happening. It shouldn’t be happening. It shouldn’t be possible, the scientists had made sure of that. It shouldn’t be, and yet, here you were. Charged up, ready to blow at the slightest inconvenience. There was no way in the slightest you could go back to your village like this. Not at all. They were going to know, they would all know, and they would leave you again and you would be all alone again. You didn’t want to be alone again, you really didn’t, but if you went to people… Even if they didn’t kick you out the moment you came back, they would always be in danger until you figured out a way to discharge.

You scrambled to your feet once more, looking around.

First things first, finding a shelter for the storm. You would figure something out once you were dry.

Your eyes fell on a small hill with what looked like a crack in the side, and as you got closer, you realised it was the entrance to a cave. Without thinking, you went in there, shaking the rain out of your fur before going to look for a dry torch in your backpack. Most of them were at the very least a little bit moist, but you were lucky and found one that was still relatively dry. With a few clicks of your flint and steel you got it burning, and for the first time you looked around. The cave went deeper than you had expected, and was larger than the hill had made it out to be.

A second thing you noticed was the fact that you weren’t alone in there. The faces of at least three creepers turned towards you, and one of them stepped forwards, hissing threateningly.

“Leave. Now.”

You understood the words hidden in its sounds, but you couldn’t find the words to explain what was going on, why you couldn’t go out there. You just stumbled backwards a little, but the creeper kept coming closer to you, closer and closer until the hissing became more intense.

“Too late.”

You managed to just about hold your arms out to protect your face as the creeper blew, and you felt the charge underneath your skin pressing outwards, wanting to let go, wanting to explode. Your heart sped up, your breathing hitching in your throat as you felt a pressure in your stomach, feeling like it was going to explode.

You ground your teeth together but it didn’t stop your repressed nature from breaking through, and with one last panicked hiss, you followed in the footsteps of the first creeper, taking the other two and a sizeable chunk of the hill with you as you exploded in a bright white light.


	22. Pop goes the YanDan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Willow from YanDan.  
> Contains blood, gore, and claustrophobia.

The walls of the room slowly but surely closed in on you, solid steel sliding over the ground with a loud shrieking. You had run to where the door was, trying to get it to open, but there was no handle on it, no way to get it to move. You had smashed your fist against it, knocking as loudly as you could, yelling for help, asking to be let out, threatening what you would do if they wouldn’t.

Of course, you weren’t sure how you would avenge yourself once you were squeezed to a paste, but that sounded like a problem for future you. You would figure out a way out, this was _not_ how you were going to die. It couldn’t be, there was way too much you still had to do, there were still way too many people to introduce to your knives.

And yet, here you were, the uncaring metal creeping closer and closer. You tried to push against it, to plant your feet steadily on the ground and try to stop the movement, but the mechanism was stronger than you, and you found yourself being shoved back slowly but surely until your heels touched the other wall.

Once more, you went up to the door, more desperate this time as you pleaded and bargained, hoping that whoever was behind it would listen. If there was even anyone there. You looked up and around, checking the walls ones more time, trying to find something, _anything_ that would help you, that would save you from your impending death.

The only thing there was the unblinking lens of a camera nestled high in the ceiling, trained on you. A blinking red light next to it indicated it was on and was recording, and you felt anger rising in your chest. Was this their form of amusement? To watch someone die in a horribly slow way?

You turned your back on the thing, shuffling a bit further backwards into the room to a place where you hoped the camera wouldn’t reach. There, you stood and waited, trying to shove a knife underneath the wall to block it. It seemed to work, for a moment, and you were just about to try the same with the other wall when the mechanism pushed on, the shrieking of the wall now joined by the sparks flying from the knife as it ground over the floor.

That had been your last idea as to how to stop it, and the realisation dawned on you that you weren’t getting out of here. You rubbed your forehead as you came to the conclusion, then hit your hand against the wall in front of you to channel out all anger you had left.

It was enough to break something, but it wasn’t the wall.

You yelled in frustration as you moved, turning so your shoulders were in parallel with the walls, to buy yourself just a little bit more time. Maybe they would reconsider. Maybe they would stop this. Maybe they would retract the walls and come in saying this was all a joke.

But no.

The walls kept pushing and pushing and pushing and you felt them squeezing against your ribs and skull, and you knew this was it. The walls squeezed harder and harder and harder now that they encountered resistance, and you felt it hurt more and more and more, the pressure in your skull building and building and building until it popped open with a crack.

Your ribs followed shortly afterwards, and you were still alive to feel the sharp edges of bone piercing though your lungs and heart.

You might have screamed, but you weren’t sure, all thoughts became a little too much as your brain got squeezed out of you like toothpaste, but still you lived, still you were conscious, albeit barely.

Blood dripped down everywhere, more and more bones crushed to bits, and finally, finally your body couldn’t take it anymore, and you died as you had lived.

Covered in blood and guts.


	23. Pincushion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Mercury.  
> Contains blood and things piercing skin.

You kept as still as possible as the arrow whizzed in your direction. As it pierced itself into the netherrack behind you, you breathed out in relief, knowing you had at the very least a little bit longer to live.

It was ridiculous that you had even managed to find yourself in this situation. You barely ever went to the nether, except when it was really necessary, and this wasn’t helping you get over your dislike of the place. You hadn’t even known that wither skeletons did anything else with their enemies besides just kill them with swords, but these fine fellows had knocked you unconscious, tying your hands to a crossbeam so you were standing on your tippy toes, and had spent the last ten minutes or so trying to figure out how bows worked using you as a target.

You weren’t entirely sure if it was a good or a bad thing that they were really bad at it. So far, the worst they had managed to do was graze your leg, and while it stung, it wasn’t anything you couldn’t handle. You just knew that the chance that you got hit if you tried to dodge a shot was a lot larger than if you just stayed still where you were, which was… Well. Counterintuitive at the very least, especially when every fibre of your being told you to try and get out of the way.

You had tried to reason with the skeletons, but they generally just stared in your direction as though you were speaking a foreign language, before returning to trying to nock an arrow correctly. Somehow, they kept managing to nock it in such a way that one of the flights kept hitting the main bow body with every shot, which helped a lot in making it miss you.

Still, you dreaded the moment they would figure out how that part worked. For now, they just stood there, rattling ominously as they almost fought over who would be next to shoot.

Somehow, you were a lot calmer in the situation than you had thought you would be. Really. Sure, you were shaking a little, but that was probably because of the position you had been in for a while now. At least, that’s what you told yourself. You dreaded the moment the wither skeletons would actually have a revelation about how they were supposed to be using the bow.

You watched how the next skeleton lined up after having conquered the weapon, nocking the arrow. Much to your surprise, this time it seemed to have accidentally turned the arrow around, actually nocking it correctly. You felt your stomach drop a little bit as it drew, and you forced yourself to try and hold still as it fired.

This time, holding still turned out a bad idea, as the arrow dug itself into your shoulder. You yelped in pain, and you saw the skeletons looking at each other before nodding and rattling their bones, and the next of them was up. This time, the first skeleton looked over what the other one was doing, having seemingly been promoted on the spot to archery teacher.

Much to your dismay, it actually seemed to have figured out what had been going wrong before that point, and you saw it correct the nocking of the other skeleton. It aimed, and this time you didn’t even think before trying to dodge out of the way.

It wasn’t fast enough, though, not far enough, as the arrow found a nice spot in your leg to bury into.

From that point forwards, more and more arrows managed to actually hit, no matter how much you tried to dodge them. There wasn’t a whole lot you could do, not with your hands tied in place, and by now you had learnt that the skeletons weren’t quite open to listen to reason or pleading. Time ticked on, and you felt more and more like a pincushion, although so far none of the skeletons had managed to hit you square in the chest or head. It was a small miracle in and off itself, but as you felt the blood slowly draining out of your various wounds, you started to wonder whether it was actually incompetence or the sadistic desire to keep you alive as long as possible.

At that point, you thought you felt like it might be better to just be shot through the heart and be done with it relatively quickly instead of all of this. Surely your body would still be a valid target even after you had left life. And if they really wanted something that would make noise when hit, they could just go and get a piglin or a zombie pigman or something like that. It really didn’t have to be you.

Still, mercy seemed far away as the wither skeletons kept shooting, one by one until blood was simply pouring out instead of just oozing, and you felt yourself become lightheaded. They had hit everything except the really vital parts by now, so you were relatively sure they were perhaps more competent than they had acted out to be, which… You didn’t like it. In the slightest. You liked to think of the various mobs as mindless creatures that just wanted to kill, but right now you started to doubt whether it worked like that.

You coughed and you felt blood trickling out of your mouth. The world was spinning ever so slightly, and you felt cold, despite being in the closest thing the world had to a literal hell. It couldn’t take a lot longer; you were sure of that. You felt like you were going to pass out any moment now, and you weren’t sure if you would ever wake up again if you did.

Perhaps that wasn’t too bad.

Another arrow was nocked, and you looked at the skeleton, almost pleading for it to just end it.

It almost seemed like it understood you, this time, as it slightly adjusted its aim, and when it let go, the arrow went straight into your bullseye. It hurt, certainly it did, but with every beat of your torn and shredded heart, more of your blood gushed out until there was simply nothing left, and your eyes slowly fell closed until everything was shrouded in a painless darkness.


	24. Spaghetti

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Moonchild.  
> Contains body horror and the vastness of space.

The deep void of the black hole hung threateningly below you as you desperately tried to hold on to the edge of the spaceship. You knew the doors of the airlock had closed on you, and you could see someone standing behind them, looking at you through the window, emotionless eyes trained on you.

You weren’t sure why you had trusted them in the first place, when they had come to you with the report that something was broken on the airlock seal. None of the machinery had said anything about it, no alarms had gone off, nothing. And as a cherry on top, you weren’t even sure if this person was part of your crew. It didn’t _look_ like it, but at the same time, the ship had carried many people from other crews when they needed a lift, it wasn’t worrying per se to see someone in a different kind of space suit.

And the airlock was one of those things you tended to take seriously. If that broke, the entire ship could be compromised, its contents sucked out into space.

And so you had gone and looked, just to be sure. A mistake, really. You should’ve trusted your instincts and your equipment, but there was little you could change about that right now. Not while you were clinging to the smallest ledge you could find purchase on, and even then, you felt the pull of the black hole trying to claim you.

You knew it was pointless, you knew you couldn’t hold on like this for longer, but that didn’t stop you from at the very least _trying_. Bit by little bit you shifted your hands over towards the airlock. There had to be an emergency measure in place there, some way for you to open the doors from the outside, but only if the doors on the other side of the airlock were closed too. Otherwise, it would need a manual override, something that could only be done from the inside, or with very brute force.

You didn’t have brute force at your disposal, though.

A shudder went through the ship as the hyperdrives kicked into motion, and you felt your fingers slip away from the ledge. You were still holding on, but only barely, and you weren’t sure how long you could keep doing so. The pull of the black hole had only become more difficult to resist now that you only had one hand to do so with, and every time you tried to grab the ledge with your other hand, you found how that just served to destabilise the grip you had with the other.

Another shudder happened, and from the corner of your eyes you could see the blue light that indicated the hyperdrive was preparing to jump into warpspeed.

Then your fingers slipped away, and you felt yourself accelerating towards the black hole below you. It spelled certain doom for you, as with every second that passed, you got closer to the event horizon, and further away from the ship. You desperately tried hitting the buttons of the communicator panel on your wrist, but when you finally managed to hit the call button, you heard nothing but static. Courtesy of all the radiation coming from the black hole, probably, enough to majorly disturb any kind of radio transmission.

Before you, you saw the blue light of the hyperdrive intensifying, and then your ship jumped forwards with an incredible speed. One blink and it was gone from your view, and you were all alone.

You just floated closer and closer to the black hole, like a leaf circling a whirlpool, and you knew that just like that leaf, there was nothing you could do to stop what was going to happen.

You felt heat slowly seeping into your spacesuit, and your legs painfully stretched towards your end. The gravitational pull was phenomenal, and time dilated the closer you got. Everything felt slower as you got stretched into a longer and longer, thinner and thinner line of spacesuit and flesh, but it did nothing to dampen the pain it caused. If anything, it gave you all the time in the world to experience it. You just hoped your end would come soon as you slowly but surely became lightheaded, the blood in your body slowly finding its way towards your feet and staying there.

Someone had once told you the name for what was happening to you right there and then. Spaghettification, they had called it, and you had laughed back then. It had sounded so silly. Now though, that you were experiencing it, you didn’t laugh. It wasn’t silly. It was just very, very painful.

You wished you could see the event horizon below you, you wished you would know how much longer this was going to take. There was nothing but the purest of blacks there, though. Just a perfect darkness.

No one knew what was beyond it, if there even was such a thing, not even the most highly acclaimed scientists.

And you would know it soon.

It was a small consolation to think off as time finally stopped, and you plunged into darkness.


	25. Rip and tear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself from Void  
> Contains blood, gore, and choking.

Sword and trident clashed into each other, making sparks fly through the air with every hit. You stepped forwards and backwards, twisting and turning your weapon in such a way that you could block the rain of blows that was coming your way. So far, you had managed, although you had been pushed backwards bit by bit. With each jab of that diamond sword you had to take a small step backwards, even if you managed to gain terrain back at a few occasions.

You didn’t quite get to attacking back, not just yet, but you were waiting for an opening. Perhaps not the best strategy, given that it basically allowed Fluid to control the pace of the battle, but sometimes playing defensively was better in the long run.

You just hoped this was one of those occasions.

It better was, otherwise you had probably just made a large mistake.

Step forwards, step backwards, deflect, deflect, parry, to the side now. You caught their blade between the prongs of your trident, and with a twist of the handle you managed to actually pry it from their hands. The blade clattered to the ground, and something in Fluid’s stature changed. It seemed almost as though they hadn’t expected it. Almost as though they had expected you to be beaten back easily.

This could well be the opening you had waited for.

With a grin on your face, you lunged forwards, dead set on sticking your trident nicely into their stomach. It was the centre of mass, and basically the biggest target, and you were not going to take risks now.

The dance of blades and deflects reversed, with you stabbing and prodding and poking and stepping forwards, while Fluid had to step backwards bit by bit. Still, they shoved your attacks to the side with their gauntleted hands, and the further you drove them backwards, the more it seemed like they were getting used to the new power balance in the situation.

You knew you had to be quick, now, before they figured out how to properly go against you in this current playing field. One of your attacks had to hit, right? You twirled your trident above your head, planning to try and whack them on the side of their head with it. This time, though, instead of stepping backwards, Fluid stepped forwards, into your reach. Their hands shot up, one to block the trident, the other to grab you by the throat as they sunk into a stance.

Both hands found something to grab, and before you knew it you felt them twisting your trident away from your hands as their sharp nails dug into your neck.

“Nice try,” they almost purred, before tossing the trident to the side, out of your reach. “Now die.”

Without warning, they squeezed your neck harder, and you felt blood well up where they had torn through your outer membrane. Then they started to pull, and you felt the slime of your throat slowly tearing further and further. Panic filled your eyes as you tried to fight them off, as you tried to grab their wrist and kick to their knees and ankles and tried to swing a punch towards their face.

It didn’t help much, though. Bare slime was not much of a match for metal armour, and you felt them wrapping their other hand around your neck as well, starting to rip and tear through it from the other side. It hurt, it hurt badly, and you couldn’t help but whimper and cry as you felt the first few pieces disconnecting and dripping to the ground.

Still, Fluid wasn’t done. They kept going, taking away chunks of slime, and with it, blood. It didn’t take long for them to have dug out your windpipe, and your eyes widened as they wrapped their hand around it. You could feel your breathing being constricted, and for a moment they held you like that, seemingly waiting for something.

Then, without warning, they pulled back their hand in one fluid motion, taking your windpipe with it.

You stared at them in shock as they let go of you and stepped backwards. You sunk to your knees, still looking at their hands, now bloodied in a colour you recognised all too well. You saw your windpipe drop to the ground, or at the very least, part of it, as you realised you couldn’t breathe, you couldn’t keep the air inside of you. Every time you tried, the air simply came rushing back out once more.

From that point on, it didn’t take long anymore. You felt life leaving your body with every heartbeat, and you slowly fell over onto the ground.

It was soft, at the very least, your head having found a patch of moss as a final pillow.

And then it was done.


	26. Hole

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Sap from Missie.

You had thought you had a victory in your pocket when you had started dragging your targets down, deep into the hole you had been buried in. Your vines were more like roots, now, digging through the dirt with ease, wrapping around your prey and making them fall further and further, deeper and deeper. It all seemed fine. It didn’t matter how much they tried to struggle against it, you had them exactly where you wanted them to be.

You were so focused on the four that you didn’t notice a fifth person coming down until you felt your vines being chopped of as well as the vibrations of someone climbing down the side of the pit. You grimaced, unpleasantly surprised, but on the other side, this meant more nutrients for you.

More of your vines burrowed through the earth, trying to get to the climber and wrap around them. It was only half successful, though, as every time your fines came near them, you would soon feel them being cut off.

Lower and lower they went, seemingly ignoring your prey, until they got to the third one down. The one with the… you were quite sure it was a hoodie. That one. There, instead of just chopping up the vines you sent their way, they also started chopping at the ones dragging your prey down. It was by that point that you also realised that perhaps it was better in the long run to just let them have this one, given that regrowing your vines would take some time and energy.

For a moment, you let the thought rummage around in your brain, before shrugging and pulling away some of the vines, just enough to let go of the one bit of prey. Sure, it wasn’t optimal and you knew it, but given the circumstances…

Three out of four wasn’t bad.


	27. An eye for an eye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself from Shuppet.  
> Contains eye horror, gore, and many, many spiders.

You should have known that leaving someone to die was not exactly the same as actually _killing_ someone. Sure, it sounded like semantics, like nitpicking on definitions, but in this case… Well. Perhaps it would have been better for you to make sure your target had been fully dead before leaving them.

Spiders were crafty beings, after all.

You moved through the hallways of your base, your prize still oozing with blood in your hands. These were going to make some fine potions, something both you and the rest of the dead team could make great use of. After all, wasn’t it easier to kill someone that was simply to weak to lift a finger to stop you?

You were still chuckling when you heard footsteps behind you. Footsteps that dragged over the floor with the grating of metal. Footsteps that came your way, stumbling but determined. A little bit later, you could also hear ragged breathing, and the hallway was doused in pink, blue, and purple light.

For a second, you blinked, unsure as to what was happening. Then you realised, and you turned around, to be faced with Fluid coming your way. Their blood stained their helmet and chestplate, but they were still coming your way.

“No, it… It can’t be you! I stabbed you! Right in the heart, you should be dead! Grey, like me!” You called out, stumbling further backwards.

“Do you really think you’re the first to try that?” Their voice was hoarse because of all the screaming they had done, but it was still enough to send a shiver down your spine. When you looked closer, you could see the knife was no longer embedded in their chest, but in their hand instead. Even though they were looking at you with only one eye, you were still amazed at how well that stare conveyed their murderous intent.

You decided right there and then that perhaps standing still was not the best option. Perhaps it would be better to instead run. After all, you knew your base better than they did, you were sure of that.

And so, you ran. You ran through hallways and rooms, up a staircase, down a staircase, straight through a courtyard, and back inside, making your way towards the deepest darkest part of the dungeons. There, you could hide, you were sure of it. Your shadows would make it happen.

You wrapped yourself in the tendrils, hiding the lighter grey parts of you, but leaving your eyes exposed for now. After all, you would like to be able to see what was going on, should Fluid somehow be able to track you. You doubted they could, though.

\---

Minutes passed, perhaps more, and you found yourself getting antsy. You didn’t like the fact that you were sitting still while you could also be brewing up your prize, you didn’t enjoy feeling like a prey in your own domain. You looked around and listened closely, trying to discern whether Fluid was there, but when you noticed nothing of the sort, you decided it was safe enough to come out.

A mistake, really.

You had barely set a few steps when you noticed something was weird about the wall. It looked like it was moving, somehow, which was not something walls were supposed to do. You looked the wall, _really_ looked at it, and figured out what it was, what was happening.

Tens, no, hundreds of spiders were crawling over it, covering basically every single square inch, and you had the feeling like their eyes were all somehow aimed at you.

You felt your stomach drop.

Then, you heard it.

Footsteps, echoing towards you.

You knew you were trapped, you knew this room only had a single entrance and exit.

_Step. Step._

Light spilled down the hallway, in those same colours as before. You knew who was there, you knew who was coming.

_Step. Step._

As one, the spiders started moving down the wall and towards you. You tried stomping on them with your feet, but for every single one you managed to squash, multiple others took its place, and before too long you felt spiders crawling up your legs, up your chest, down your arms, everywhere.

_Step. Step._

Now, the spiders started weaving their webs around you. Sure, one web was weak, but this many, this layered? You did your best to break them before they could get a hold of you, but there were simply too many of them to effectively fend all of them off.

_Step. Step._

Before you knew it, you were wrapped in a cocoon of spider silk, and finally, Fluid came into view. They still looked exactly the same as they had before, although their pace was… A little bit less strained. A little bit more invigorated. Compared to your dead self, they looked very much alive, much more so than when you had left them the second time.

“Hello, Shuppet.”

You could _almost_ hear the cold sadism in their voice as they stepped closer. You wanted to move away, you really did, but the spiders had done their jobs well, and were now simply wrapping you up further.

If only you knew what to say back. You still didn’t quite believe they were alive, but the colour all over them very much stated that that was how things were.

They came closer towards you, taking hold of your head with one gauntleted hand, and lightly letting the knife dancing over your skin, leaving a trail of their blood in the process. It gave you goosebumps, the feeling of sharp metal on your skin, but you tried very much to keep a cool façade. You knew this would probably end with your death, but at the same time, you knew you would simply wake up again after it, perhaps even greyer this time.

“Just do it already. Kill me, and let me get back to my brewing,” you bit towards them, and for a short moment, the blade paused.

“Where’s the _fun_ in that?” they scoffed. “No, I was thinking more… An eye for an eye.”

They dropped the knife, instead opting to use one of their gauntlets sharp metal nails to push at the side of your eye, before clawing right in there. Dead or not, you still felt pain, and you still felt the pressure against your eye increasing, you still felt how it popped out of its socket, and you still felt how they tore through the muscles and nerves keeping it attached to you.

You screamed loudly as they did, and it was almost enough to make you feel some kind of remorse for what you had done.

Almost.

Then they came for your second eye, but instead of making it at least some kind of quick, Fluid seemed to have decided to take their sweet time to squeeze every little scream you had inside of you out into the air.

To say it was nigh unbearable was an understatement.

Still, at some point the torment did come to an end as they severed the last few bits of muscle. You heard something soft and wet fall to the ground, and you almost instinctively turned your head towards the sound.

Fluid stopped you, though, grabbing you by the chin and forcing you to look up again. Of course, you couldn’t see anything, but this felt more like them admiring their work.

“Excellent. And now… _This_ is how you kill someone. First you stab them in a vital organ…”

It came almost as a relief to feel the knife plunging into your heart.

“Then, you make sure to open up the wound a little further…”

You felt the blade being cruelly twisted around, and you let out a yelp of surprise and pain.

“And to ensure they properly bleed out, you remove the blade.”

Fluid did as they said, pulling the knife back out. You felt your blood spilling, soaking your silken bonds, and you felt yourself becoming light in the head.

“Of course, if you want to make sure they actually die, you just repeat those three steps a few times.”

Once, twice, thrice more you felt that same stabbing pain going through you as the knife went into your stomach, neck, and stomach again.

Once, twice, thrice more, you felt the blade being twisted around, your flesh tearing apart.

Once, twice, thrice more, you felt how wells of blood opened, spilling out.

You were rapidly losing consciousness rapidly now, your mind swimming. It didn’t take long for you to fully black out. The last thing you heard was them speaking.

“And that’s how it’s done.”


	28. Coffin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Jay  
> Contains drowning and claustrophobia.

You awakened to the sound of flowing water. It confused you. As far as you knew, there simply shouldn’t be any near enough to be heard, and yet… There it was. You looked around, trying to find the source, only to be met by total darkness around you. Again, something that shouldn’t be there. You had made sure to install enough torches and lamps in your base to make sure that no hostile mobs could spawn in there while you slept.

As you woke up further, though, you figured out you were no longer laying on the soft mattress of your bed. Instead, you felt cold and sturdy metal underneath you. You reached out in confusion, trying to find the edges in order to figure out what it was, only to come across more metal plating almost seamlessly attached perpendicular to the one you were laying on, and then more of the same stuff above you, as well as near your head and feet.

From what you could gather, you had found yourself in a metal coffin of sorts, the edges welded shut. The only thing you could feel that was difficult was a small panel right above your face, but you couldn’t quite make out what that was or what it was for.

Then the sound of the water changed from merely flowing to dripping down, the sound amplified by the metal confines of the space you were in. It didn’t take long for you to feel the water lapping at your feet, and for the first time you realised the place you were locked in seemed ever so slightly tilted upwards, so your head was higher than the rest of your body.

Still, you didn’t like the thought of the water being there. You didn’t like how it slowly rose higher and higher. You didn’t like the cold it brought with it.

Gods, you didn’t like the cold.

You started banging your fists against the metal roof, hoping that someone would notice, preferably _before_ you drowned, that would be great.

“Hello? Is anyone there? Help me! Let me out of here!” you called out, and you heard your voice echoing back to you. You sounded scared, you knew that, but there wasn’t a whole lot you could do about it.

Truth was, you _were_ scared. While you had had no issues with water in the slightest before your accident, ever since… Well. Let’s just say the strider parts of you didn’t appreciate it, as it always just felt too cold, too thin, somehow. Too unsafe.

And now here you were, stuck in what seemed like a drowning trap, as though you were not much more than a simple mob.

By the time the water reached your hips, you were still banging on the walls, more desperately now. Then, all of a sudden, there was light around you, as a cover got removed from the panel before your face. It turned out to be glass, and behind that…

“Fluid?! I’m so glad you’re here! Get me out of this thing, it’s a death trap!” you brought out, relieved to see someone you recognised. Someone you knew. Instead of doing anything, though, Fluid just stood there, looking at you with their expressionless helmet.

“C’mon, please, it’s filling up with water!” There was quite some desperation in your voice, but it didn’t seem to move them. They merely bent forwards a little, as to make sure they could properly see your face as you would inevitably drown. That time came closer and closer, as the water had gone up to your chest by now, and it kept rising and rising and rising.

“Please, this isn’t funny, please Fluid, help me! Come on, you know me, please, let me out of here!”

Finally, you heard something from their side. A muffled chuckle, courtesy of the layer of metal between you and them.

“Tell me, why would I save someone that would stab me in the back given the chance?”

Your heart sank while the water rose further, up to your neck now, and you had to use your hands to push yourself upwards, to continue getting air as long as you could.

_How did they know that? They weren’t there when I discussed the possibility, so… How?_

Still, if you could somehow convince them to _not_ let you die here, you could probably justify _not_ backstabbing them.

“Because… Because those were hypotheticals! I’m not gonna kill you. Please, please just let me out, I don’t want to die, not yet!” The water rose to just under your chin, and you looked at them with pleading eyes. “Please, I’ll… I’ll do anything you ask, just… Please don’t kill me.”

You heard more water dripping down, this time with your eyes as sources. You were crying, and you didn’t like it, but you couldn’t help it.

“Anything, you say?” came Fluid’s calm response, while they studied the nails of their gauntlet.

“Yes, anything! Anything for you, Fluid!” You had to tilt your head backwards now, to still be able to catch a breath, and still you could see the other person looking at you. Now, though, they came closer, their face basically filling the entire view from the panel.

“Then perish.”

They brought the words laced with cold sadism, and your heart sunk even further.

“No, please, no, I-”

Water caught up to your lips, and with no more space to go, with no more air pocket to breathe from, you had to hold your breath. Still, you were looking through that panel, pleading with your eyes, banging with your fists, fighting to be left out until the very moment your body’s breathing reflex kicked in, and you involuntarily opened your mouth.

The water came rushing into your mouth and lungs, and you found yourself coughing to get it out again, in the process only ejecting the last bits of precious, precious air in your system.

If anyone had told you before that water could burn, you would have laughed at them.

Not anymore.

You felt as though your lungs were on fire, the inferno blazing up higher and higher with each panicked breath you took. Still, there was no air there, no solace, and you saw your vision slowly turning to darkness.

Your struggle stopped not much later, and the last thing you saw was Fluid covering up the panel again, casting you back into darkness.

And so, after life you were the same as before it; floating gently in dark water.


	29. Lawyered up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Willow from DragonO.  
> Contains thoughts of cannibalism.  
> With a special guest appearance by the lockpicking lawyer.

You were already licking your lips at the sight of your newest prey. Raw, rare, medium, well done, scorched, how would you prepare your meal this time? There were many options, some more appetizing than others.

Not that it mattered a lot, just the fact that you had found another dragon as a snack made it special enough. She was shuddering in the small cage you had crammed her in, and you were skulking up and down your lair as you weighed the various options in your mind.

You _could_ go for a traditional flambé. It sounded just about ironic enough for your tastes, to flambé another dragon, and you were _certain_ she could appreciate it too. Another option was slow-cooking, or roasting on the spit, but you doubted how effective it would be. Or doable, for that matter.

_Hmmm…. So many possibilities…_

You halted where you stood, rubbing one of your claws over the scales of your cheek. Sure, you couldn’t see the cage for a moment, but you doubted your prey would be able to go anywhere. It had been locked properly; you had made sure of that. It would be fine. It would all be completely fine.

At least, that’s what you thought until you heard a soft voice coming from that direction. Not the voice of your prey, you knew that, but instead… a calm male voice you didn’t quite recognise.

“Click out of one, nothing on two… three is binding. Nice click out of three, nothing on four… Back to the beginning. One seems to be in a false gate, we got another nice click out of that. Click out of two, nothing on three… Four is binding, nice click out of four, and just like that we got it open. As you can see, folks, there is no reason why this lock should be called a ‘high security’ lock. I’d reckon even a low-skilled picker could pick it open in under twenty seconds.”

You frowned, at first not entirely sure what was going on. Then you heard something made of metal falling onto the ground, and some other metal grating open. Almost as though…

No. No, your lock _was_ high security. You had checked, it had said so on the label!

You turned around, to see the cage slamming shut again, with Willow running away from it, after a guy in lawyers robes and someone in green armour.

“ _Fluid…_ ”

Anger bubbled up within you as you saw your prize slipping out from under your eye, and before you knew it, you were spewing bright green fire after them. Not that it mattered much, they were long gone by the time the flames died out.


	30. Lab safety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself from Avon.  
> Contains poisoning and blood.

_There was no way they’re getting out of this. Not alive, at least._

That’s what you had thought as you left the lab. Maybe it was what you had hoped, as Fluid had proven quite persistent in their desire to stay alive. And as others had noticed before, it was a bad idea to just leave them to die, no matter how much the odds seemed to be stacked against them.

You first realised this as you saw the purple gas wafting out through the skylight, and you cursed as you realised the gas had a lower density than air. It would simply rise up to the ceiling and then out via your escape route. It meant one of three ways to kill them went straight out of the window if they kept low enough to the ground. Still. Two left. You were relatively certain they wouldn’t survive that, but just to be sure, you circled back, finding another window to enter the building through. Not straight into the lab, you were not a fool, but some other place you could watch from.

Walking the various hallways, you found your path towards the lab, towards the outer door of it. It had a window, so you could nicely see what was going on inside. The purple gas was dissipating quickly, both through the open skylight and some kind of ventilation system. As you looked, though, you couldn’t quite see Fluid anywhere, just a trail of blood on the floor going from where their experiment had blown up towards the side of the room.

You shifted your position a little bit, in order to be able to look in from another angle, and much to your dismay you saw them sitting against the wall, still very much alive, under the emergency shower that was pouring water all over them. The puddle they were sitting in was vaguely green with their blood, while the acid seemed to be washing off their partially corroded armour.

_No, no this can’t be. How are they… Dammit, I should’ve known they had tricks up their sleeves! Proper lab safety be damned!_

Still. Right now they were weak. Right now, you could perhaps finish this. Right now, you had a chance like you would probably never have again. Weakened, their armour compromised. Already bleeding. Unsuspecting. Hopefully still at least a little bit out of it because of the gas.

In a split second, you made your decision. You drew your rapier, your hand on the doorknob as you waited for the gas to dissipate a little bit further.

Then, you saw how they started to move, methodically starting to pull pieces of glass out of their arms and legs, wherever they had torn through their undersuit instead of ricocheting of their armour. You decided that you couldn’t wait any longer.

You came rushing through the door, rapier forwards towards them, hoping to stab them good and dead. Fluid looked up towards you, emotionless eyes meeting yours, and they threw the handful of bloodstained glass shards towards you. Some missed. Some harmlessly collided with your cloak. Some grazed you, leaving cuts where your blood mingled with the green of theirs. One or two actually managed to dig in a little bit further.

It took a moment for you to realise how numb the places you were hit in were becoming, to the point of not even being able to move them, and you felt it spreading fast. First the little area around the wounds, then a sizeable circle around it, then even further. Still, you kept running towards them, wanting to finish off this task.

It became harder to do so when you stopped feeling one of your legs, and you tripped and fell to the ground. Then you stopped feeling the hand your rapier was in, and much as you wanted to move your fingers, you couldn’t. You saw how they relaxed, your rapier falling to the ground, and panic started racing through you.

This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. This wasn’t how this was supposed to end.

You weren’t the one supposed to die here. Fluid was.

You grabbed your rapier with your other hand and started crawling forwards as you became aware of the lack of feeling in your stomach. The numbness was spreading fast, now, going even to places where you were sure you hadn’t been hit in. Your mind started swimming, your vision blurred, your breaths became shallow.

In front of you, you heard Fluid chuckling.

“You shouldn’t have come back here.”

You wanted to say something in response, some snappy remark about just dying already, but your words slurred together until to the point of not being words anymore. You were vaguely aware of no longer moving forwards, of having lost feeling in basically all of your body, of feeling your heartbeat slow down until it was barely there, of feeling your brain beg for oxygen.

Then, Fluid moved again, crawling out from under your shower and towards you.

The next thing you knew was them stabbing you in the throat with your own rapier, although you didn’t feel any of it.

Maybe it was a mercy. Maybe it wasn’t. You weren’t sure, and you would never know.

Your eyes fell closed one last time, and you died to the sounds of flowing water.


	31. Basketball

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself from Fluffy.  
> Contains decapitation and light body horror.

You had scarpered away from Fluid after working your magic, certain that it would take. You had been here before. You had killed people like this before. Sure, it took some time, but you had time. It wasn’t as though you were going to die of boredom or anything, you were already undead! Death was not something you feared, and neither were dying threats.

You hummed your tune, impossible as that should be without lungs, happy to be done here and able to just go back to your base. You needed to patch your sweater. Again. Really, while being shot through the head was annoying, it was still better than having to figure out how to repair your clothes yet again.

However, you hadn’t even left the village before you had to stop in your tracks. There was an iron golem there, patrolling its route, looking out for all kinds of undead to punch into next week. While you had achieved sentience and considered yourself an adventurer, you were aware that some of the more… let’s say _protective_ of the golems did not entirely agree with you on that subject. To them, you were still little more than an average stray, having fallen through an end portal or not. You couldn’t _quite_ blame them for that, but you preferred your bones more or less unbroken.

And so you found yourself slowly moving backwards, hoping the golem hadn’t seen you yet. You quietly set one bony foot behind the other, trying to make as little sound as possible, but much to your delight it seemed like the golem was just continuing on its route without even looking in your direction. You let out a sigh in relief as you set one step further backwards, and the relief immediately ended when you felt yourself colliding with cold metal and thorny vines.

“Who-” you started asking, but even before you had turned around you knew you had made a mistake. Rarely did a village have only one golem.

You had no time to say anything else before you felt yourself being picked up by large metal hands, which then proceeded to toss you through the air as though it was nothing. You heard multiple bones snap as you fell down to the ground a few meters further, and you couldn’t help but let out a yelp of pain. Immediately afterwards you slapped your hands in front of your ever-grinning jaw, as though that was going to retroactively block out the sound.

It didn’t, though, and you soon heard not only heavy iron footsteps approaching you from behind, but also from the front, where the first iron golem had turned in its tracks and was now headed towards you.

“Wait, we can talk about this! I’m not- I’m an adventurer! I’m not a-”

Once again, you were picked up, and you couldn’t help but yell as you were tossed to the ground as though you were a basketball being passed. More bones cracked, and you scrambled to your feet in order to run away.

It wasn’t fast enough, though, and now the other golem picked you up.

“Oh, come on, I’m not a _straaaaaaaaaaaay!_ ” you yelled as you were thrown through the air. This time, though, instead of falling on the ground and breaking more things, a golem caught you, crushing your ribcage in the process.

From there on, it seemed like the golems were simply playing a game of toss-the-stray, while in the process breaking more and more of you. Your leg fell to the ground at some point, limping a little bit before just falling flat and staying still, as did your arm. Your hand tried to scarper away when it was its turn to go, and you were quite certain quite some chiropractors would be envious of the amount of spine cracking these golems managed to get done.

Everything had to end at some point, though, even things that were fun games. Sure, it wasn’t a very fun game for you, for you it was mostly just very painful, but the golems seemed to be enjoying themselves.

It ended when one of them caught your skull a little bit too roughly, crushing it to splinters.

Like you had said to Fluid, you didn’t live to see the sunrise.

And dawn didn’t miss you.


	32. ENDERPERSON SIMPLY TOO ANGRY TO DIE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself from Cloud.  
> Contains gore and body horror.

You didn’t like it that your hands had been bound behind your back. You didn’t like it that you had been pulled from your home. You didn’t like it that your home had been set on fire with all your belongings in it. You didn’t like it that you were now in a room that was almost unbearably warm for your standards.

All that, though, was nothing compared to what had been done next.

Much as you disliked everything else that had happened, the thing that had made you snap was the moment they had removed your mask. The thing that had made you trash in your bonds, trying to kick and bite and hurt was the moment they had looked you straight in the eyes.

You had felt your anger bubbling up inside of you, unstoppable rage coursing through your veins. You had felt how much you had been shaking, you had felt your own blood dripping from your wrists where your bonds had dug into your skin.

You simply couldn’t help yourself as Fluid calmly stared at you as though you were the most interesting thing on earth, you simply wanted to do something, _anything_ to make them stop. You kicked out towards them, but they caught your foot easily, twisting it to the side cruelly. You felt it snap, you felt it break, but the pain didn’t matter, not in that moment.

You _would_ make them stop looking at you. They _had_ to stop looking at you. It was that simple. It was the only thought going around in your head at that point.

Another kick, another snap and break. It didn’t stop you. You kicked again and again and again, each attack more easily thwarted than the one before, as you saw your blood dripping from legs with more bends in them than they should have.

And still, they kept staring straight into your eyes.

You were aware that you had to be yelling at some point, releasing primal screeches and cries reminiscent of other voidfolk, your jaws opening up widely as you did. It didn’t help you much, though, it only served to make your throat sore, while Fluid kept on just calmly breaking you more and more until your legs no longer did what you asked of them.

Clear thoughts had become difficult, so damn difficult as you saw red in anger.

Then, Fluid seemingly decided they were done with your legs, moving a little bit backwards to grab a bucket of something. With one seemingly practiced motion, they threw the contents out over you, and you felt the familiar burn of water mixed with the unfamiliar burn of something else.

If you could, you would be screaming out louder right now, but your throat simply didn’t want to. You simply couldn’t.

And Fluid stood there, staring at you as you felt pain over your entire body, enough to almost drown out the anger. Almost.

If anything, it made you fight harder, desperate to get out from this torment. As you looked on, though, you saw how whatever had been in the water was now burning through your clothes and skin, blistering your skin, opening it up wherever it touched. Blood flowed freely as your tormenter simply chuckled, still observing.

You cried and cried and cried as the flesh melted from your bones, but the anger in your system kept you from embracing simple unconsciousness, it kept you awake and alive for now.

It wasn’t a nice thing. You wished they would just look away, freeing you from the defence mechanisms of your voidfolk origins so you could just die instead of experiencing this.

It took longer than you might have wanted. Whatever had been in the water didn’t stop as it reached your bones, simply eating through that too.

It was excruciating, every second more so than your last, until it stopped. At some point, you felt the pain ebb away as your nerves were simply to fried to say anything back, and finally, finally, Fluid looked away from your eyes.

Your anger fell too, and before you knew it, the adrenalin in your system was depleted and your heart simply stopped.

Your eyes fell closed to the sight of your mask being placed back onto your face.


	33. Sus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Zecori from Chair.  
> For context, this was written after two straight hours of playing among us.

You were prowling around the decontamination chambers, looking for the next victim to unleash your eye-filled tentacles upon. You were doing quite alright so far, and you had the feeling you were becoming quicker and quicker at it. It was simple, really. Walk up to them while they were distracted by this task or the other, run the right program, and there it was.

One less person on this godforsaken planet to worry about.

You didn’t even bother cleaning up after yourself. Someone else would undoubtedly report the body, in time, and you would simply deflect, making up a lie about being busy with checking sensors or repairing some wiring or something like that. So far, the others had accepted your words without the slightest hint of doubt, even kicking one of their own into the lava at some point.

This time, though, as you all assembled in the cafeteria, you knew there was something different. The others looked at you with wary eyes, squinting at you as one of them started talking.

“I found Zec in storage, mangled beyond recognition. And I know it wasn’t any of you guys, we were together the whole time. So… We all know what’s going to happen here now, don’t we, Chair?” Fluid spoke, managing to keep most emotion out of their voice as their attention shifted from you to the others and back again.

The mouth on your screen opened and closed while your system was trying to figure out a way out of this. It was simply impossible. You had been _so_ sure the others had split up before you had taken out Zecori, and you wanted to shift the blame to someone else, but the stone-cold faces of the others on the mission told you it was pointless as they one by one clicked a button on their communicator.

You simply refused to do so, you refused to condemn yourself, even when the system prompted you a few times to input something.

The results were not surprising in the slightest, and you barely had a chance to run away before rings of light appeared around your arms and legs, making it impossible for you to flee.

You should’ve run when you had the chance.

“Well then, guys, towards the lava pit,” Fluid spoke, and the others nodded, lifting you from the ground where you had fallen. Then the procession started, almost a habit by now. You were carried to the edge of the lava pit, to where a bit of rock jutted out a little, and the crewmates set you down on the ground there. You shuffled around until you were facing them. If they were going to kick you out, they better look at your face and see the consequences.

Instead of a traditional kick to the chest, though, Fluid had dragged a simple wooden chair outside. They came closer to you, lifting the thing up high.

“Any last words?”

“I hope you all die horribly.”

Then, Fluid whacked you in the shoulder with the chair, and you heard wood breaking as you lost your balance and you started falling backwards. Normally you would put a foot behind you to stabilise again, but this time… Well. That was not an option, not while you were bound.

Instead, you lost your footing, falling backwards into the lava. The last thing you saw was the remains of a chair being thrown in after you, and then you sunk into the pool of brilliant orange.


	34. Why OSHA compliance is a thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Atlantica.  
> Contains very minor mentions of injury.

Balancing precariously on a bit of scaffolding, you hammered a few nails through the hinges of your brand-new shutters. It had been quite the exercise to get them up here, but so far so good, and you were happy to _finally_ be able to add them to your house.

Did they entirely match the rest of the colour palette? No, not in the slightest.

Did they function? You sure as hell hoped so.

Were they going to make your life better? Yes. All the yes.

No longer would you be woken up at dawn with sunlight shining right into your face. No longer would you lose precious, precious hours of sleep after spending too much of the night awake. None of that. Your room would be nice and dark, only lit by some lanterns you could turn down while you slept.

Those sweet, sweet dreams would be all yours, to enjoy at a time _you_ wanted, instead of at times bound by the stupid solar cycle.

You sat back a little, appreciating your handywork. Yes, one of the shutters hung a little bit lopsided, but that was okay. You had no illusions about being able to make this all perfectly straight and aligned, that was simply not happening. Besides, it wouldn’t even _really_ be visible, not with the way the rest of your base was constructed. Multiple walls were a little bit slanted, and there were no straight corners to be found anywhere. The windows were a bit funky, the door got stuck in it’s frame every so often, the floor wasn’t flat, but that all didn’t matter, this was your home and it was uniquely yours.

Nodding a few times, you picked up your hammer and nails again, and you started carefully climbing down. You knew yourself, if you didn’t pay attention there was every chance you would accidentally miss a rung and plummet down to your death. It had happened before, but luckily from lower heights, so you had made it out alive with some serious bruises and a broken arm, nothing that didn’t heal in time.

So far, though, it all went well. You softly sang a song as you climbed down, trying to match your movements to the beat of the words as you could almost _hear_ the music in your mind. Really, one of these days you were going to figure out how to put the songs onto music disks, so you could just have a jukebox playing as you worked.

That would be nice.

A smile appeared on your face as you got to the bottom part of the scaffolding, and you hopped off, landing in the soft grass and immediately almost losing your balance. Still, it was better than actually falling, so that was something you got going for yourself, which was nice.

You sent one last look upwards, making sure you were happy with the placement of the shutters, before pushing against the side of the scaffolding to make it fall over. You no longer needed it to be there.

Sadly for you, though, you didn’t exactly check what side you were pushing on, and instead of pushing it out towards the grassy field that surrounded your house, you managed to move it into the one direction you shouldn’t have pushed it in.

You realised your mistake the moment the first of the scaffolding collided with your house. It made quite some noise, but instead of stepping away, you just looked, slapping your hands before your mouth.

“Oh. Oh no.”

You heard wood crashing into more wood and glass, and you heard both breaking before planks and glass shards started raining down upon you. It hit you with quite some force, shaking you out of your stupor, but it was too late. More and more rained down, driving you to the ground, and you covered your head with your arms.

It rained down for quite a bit, and you felt heavy bits of wood bruising your back, while bits of glass cut into your arms.

Then, suddenly, it was over. You were shaking, your body sore and hurting in multiple places, but it was nothing that wouldn’t heal in time. That was what you told yourself.

It would be fine.

You looked upwards, just in time to see one of your new hinges tumble down.

A second later, everything went black.


	35. Beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending Arkai from VoidSaysDie.  
> Contains mind control, stabbing, and blood.

You had been carefully observing your next target, with your trident still in your hands. They were just _sitting_ there, chatting away to seemingly empty space. The longer you looked, he less they seemed like an actual threat. Sure, you had _heard_ Arkai was a mercenary, but… The way they were sitting around right now didn’t fit into that narrative. They looked too unguarded, too relaxed, too… well, _unready_ for combat.

You had expected differently, and this threw you off your rhythm. You had expected to get here and to encounter the need to fight for your unlife, you had expected blood and guts and stabbing and slashing.

None of that had happened so far, and it was almost as though Arkai hadn’t even noticed your presence yet. And dead or not, somehow the thought of attacking right now didn’t sit right with you. It was… Well. You couldn’t quite explain it, not even to yourself. You felt as though you just didn’t want to hurt them. It wasn’t something you had ever felt before.

And so, instead of jumping out of the bushes with your weapons drawn, you just… walked out. You had put your trident back in the scabbard on your back, and you moved over to where Arkai was sitting.

This was the first moment you realised something was wrong. You did not _want_ to move over. You did not _want_ to walk in their direction, but it was as though your body had a will of its own. Only now did you realise your target was looking at you intently as they pulled a sword out from behind their back. Their chatting had stopped, and for the first time you started to question whether it had all been an act.

And yet, you still walked towards them. You willed your hands to grab your weapon, you willed your body to attack, but nothing happened. You simply couldn’t _attack_ this person, they didn’t deserve that, you felt that. At least your words were still yours to control.

“What- What are you doing to me? Tell me!” you brought out, and Arkai smirked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” they stepped closer towards you, that smirk still on their face as they raised their sword. You felt yourself come to a halt, and your arms started to raise and spread out as though you were going in for a hug.

That was the moment Arkai attacked, making a large gash in your abdomen before moving to stab you right in the heart. It was only when they actually stabbed you that you felt something fading away from your mind, and you found yourself twitching and gasping, trying to move away from them. You knew that whatever they had done to you had ended, but there simply wasn’t enough time, you wouldn’t be able to do anything before your pierced heart would be done pouring out its contents.

You tried to grab your trident again as Arkai kicked you off their sword, and you fell over with a cry of pain. Being undead already didn’t make it hurt any less as you saw your target appear above you. You coughed a few times, and you tasted blood in your mouth as you weakly tried to move further backwards, but you felt yourself weakening with every second that passed as grey blood soaked the ground.

Then, the sword descended upon you once more, and it was over the moment it hit your throat.


	36. Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Marzo.  
> Contains needles, dreamstates, hints to being drugged and kidnapping.  
> Best enjoyed with [Vivaldi's Winter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZCfydWF48c) playing in the background

You drifted through the ship; the pull of gravity long forgotten. Around you were people you recognised, people you knew, although their faces and voices were lost to time. Their clothes were works of art, representing millennia of space exploration and humanoid life. It was every historical costumer’s dream, to see all these garments, perfectly preserved and worn as they would have all those years ago.

You were not a costumer, though. You were an admin, friend of many people spread through time and space alike. The job usually came with the ever-present nagging feeling of responsibility, of having to check the course or communicate with this faction or that, but right now… That was gone. All was well as you followed the sound of music, a melody that was familiar yet unrecognisable.

It wasn’t hard to discern that you were far from awake, instead dreaming of something that could have been if time had simply stopped caring about linearity. These dreams brought back memories you had thought you had forgotten, memories of times and places and people, but you could never quite remember the important things. Never the names, never the faces, never the voices. Instead, you heard people chatting away in your own voice, speaking languages which you knew would not have been the one spoken by the person in question. Some languages didn’t even sound like words at all, mixing bits and bobs from your vast knowledge of dialects into an incomprehensible mess.

Ever so gently you drifted around a corner, the hallways of the ship connecting differently from how you remembered. That was alright though, such were dreams. And thus, instead of finding yourself in a medbay, as the universal signs of red crosses had indicated, you were suddenly in a ballroom, complete with a shining wooden floor, and mirrors covering the walls and ceiling. A grand chandelier hung in the air, unconnected to anything yet swaying as though dancing on a breeze. The briefest thought of the open flames of the candles being a fire hazard shot through your mind as the music shifted, and the tones of a harpsichord and violins filled the room.

The people present shifted too, from floating around seemingly randomly to standing on the floor, pairing up as they started to dance, movements practiced and elegant.

That was not what caught your eyes, though.

No, that honour went to what you spotted in the mirrors all around. Or rather, _did not_ spot. None of the dancers was there, and it seemingly was just you, and a string orchestra’s worth of instruments hanging in the air above the dancefloor. Snowflakes were falling from somewhere as the instruments sped up, as did the unmirrored dancers.

You recognised this song, too, although as before, you could not name it if your life depended upon it.

Instead, you moved closer to a mirror, your fingers trailing over its surface while your reflection did the same. There was something wrong with that mirrored version of you, though. You looked… More blue than normal, while hoarfrost covered your hair, shoulders and arms. Almost as though you had frozen over. Along your arms, you saw blood start to well up, dripping from pinpricks then flowing freely. At least, while you knew the pale white blue didn’t match your idea of blood, your mind screamed at you that it was.

Then, the mouth of your reflection moved, and you felt yours moving along with it. The sounds that came forth weren’t so much words as they were sounds of a violin, flowing towards a crescendo with the rest of the instruments, and there was an urgency behind it all, urging you to… To do something. You just weren’t sure what. You wanted to ask, you really did, but your mouth wasn’t your own.

The double bass in the background swelled and drowned out your thoughts as you noticed more blood on your reflection’s arms, and-

Jabs of pain in your left and right arm broke through the dream, letting it shatter to pieces before you blinked back to a wakeful state. You still heard that song echoing through your mind, and still, the name eluded you. Then again, other things required your attention, such as the mechanical arms moving around you, and the dull throbbing in various places on your arms. As you looked down, you saw for the first time what was going on.

Intravenous drips were attached to your arms, clear tubes connecting to them from the sides of the ceiling. Nothing was flowing through it yet, which was a good thing, but you didn’t like the thought of what might happen that changed. The dark cloth restraints that held you in place refused to let you do anything about it, though, and much as you tried, you weren’t able to reach any of the tubes, neither with fingers nor teeth. You tried, for a while, until the mechanical arms retracted, seemingly content with the amount of sensors they had stuck to various places on your forehead and neck.

With a sigh, you started assessing the situation. This wasn’t the first time you had found yourself in a tough spot, and so far, you had always come out on top. Sure, you had a crew to help you most of the time too, but you could hardly imagine none of them bursting in somewhere soon. Much as you loved your semi-adopted kids, you knew they loved their space mom. Of course, most of the time it had been you that saved _their_ skin, but the reverse had been necessary at more than a few moments too.

As such, you were not too worried when you looked around, looking for clues as to what was going on.

It seemed you had found yourself in a pod of sorts, lit by an impersonal and sterile white light. In front of you was what looked like a glass panel, although you could not look through it. It was all old technology. Not as old as you, of course, but still. It felt like something that would have been considered old millennia ago.

Looking at yourself, you didn’t see the familiar contours of your space suit, nor the colours of your undersuit. Instead, you were still in your robes from the night before, when... Well. You weren't even sure what had happened, everything you remembered was hazy after some point. You had been on one of the older extant generation ships, back from before warp drives and FTL transport were things, when humanity had to get creative to get to their closest neighbouring planets or to even _dream_ of breaking out of their solar system to head to the stars beyond. It had been a celebration, of sorts, but you could not for the life of you remember what for. You just knew there had been many people, influential people, they had to be.

You shut your eyes, trying to trace your activities of that evening. You had danced, at some point, one of those old dances that had been all the rage eons prior and that had never _quite_ left your muscle memory. After that… You were having a drink with... Much as you scoured your mind, all you could really remember was the colour green, and for some reason a spider came to mind. It was also the last thing you could remember happening on that evening.

Had there been something in your drink? Was that it? You wished you could say if it had tasted differently from what you would expect, but right now, you simply couldn’t say. It was frustrating, very much so. You disliked forgetting things, despite knowing it was simply an unavoidable part of life. Couldn’t you just forget things that didn’t matter, yet still stuck around, instead of those crucial details that could well mean the difference between getting out of a hairy situation or being stuck there?

A sigh rolled over your lips. At the same time, you heard muffled noises coming from outside. Footsteps. They came your way, and seconds later you vaguely heard the beeps of an ancient keypad. The glass pane cleared up and became transparent again, and you got a good view of what was beyond it.

You saw more pods on the opposite wall, metal balconies snaking their way along the higher levels, and you realised you were still in the generation ship. You also realised exactly _where_ in the ship you had to be. The tune from your dream swelled up in your mind once more, but this time you had a name.

 _Winter_.

This made you worry a little bit more, for some reason. You had never quite been a fan of cryogenics, not when it was an up and coming technology, and not when its successor’s successor got retired. And not now, years upon years later, the need for such methods mostly gone. It made you worry that perhaps your crew was not familiar with how it worked, and more importantly, how it could be reversed. It was quite a fickle thing, after all.

You tore your eyes away from the pods, this time focussing on the person currently pulling a keyboard towards them and typing things. They wore a spacesuit that looked like an old suit of armour, were it not for the lights embedded into it in various places. A spider motif was quite pervasive through it all, and all at once memories from the night before came rolling in.

You were absolutely certain this was the person you had had that last drink with. Of course, they had worn robes, then, in order to blend in better, but the crown was the same. The colours in general were the same, too, and those eyes… Well. They had been hard to miss.

“You…” you brought out, your voice a tad hoarse from having just woken up. Still, it was enough for the person outside to notice.

“Me indeed. I hope you slept well, Marzo, because soon you won’t be doing much else.”

“Why are you doing this? Let me go at once, or-”

“Or what? Your precious crew will come to find you? Don’t make me laugh. As for why I’m doing this… It’s simple, really.”

You did not like the tone of their voice one bit. You liked it even less when they shifted their attention from the keyboard towards you and pulled out a very familiar wanted poster. You saw your own face staring back at you, the reward clearly highlighted next to it.

“You know, they say kill on sight, but… Where is the fun in that? Then again, they also said backup would be necessary, but here we are,” they mused, before chuckling and putting the poster away again. You weren’t sure if the fact that they _weren’t_ going to kill you was supposed to make your situation better or worse. “Oh well.”

You squinted at them as you tried your bonds once more, filled with a futile hope that something had changed between the last time you had tried and now. Of course, nothing happened, but the point was that you at least tried. At the same time, you were raking your brain for information about the person in front of you. Identifying them was easy, but that wasn’t the issue. You liked to keep up with the posters the local authorities put out, in case one of your or your cousin’s crewmates was on them. As such, you knew about Fluid, but you also knew they were wanted for forgery amongst other things, so you weren’t entirely sure how much information about them you could trust.

“Listen, if it’s about the money, I am sure we can arrange something. I know a guy. Just… Can we talk about this?” At this point, you were mostly trying to stall for time, hoping one of your crewmates would just barge in unannounced before anything _really_ bad happened.

For a short moment, it seemed like Fluid was actually considering your question, before looking you straight in the eyes and hitting a key on the keyboard.

“How about…. No.”

You heard pumps come to life as the colourless liquid in the drips transitioned to an icy blue. It felt cold as it entered your veins, and you couldn’t suppress the shiver that went through you.

“Fluid, please. There is no need for this, stop this madness! If you know me, you know my crew, and you know they would stop at nothing to… Why are you laughing?”

They were laughing as though you had just told the greatest joke in history, and yet, there was still a distinctly evil undertone to it all.

“You think they are coming to save you? They won’t be here in time, _especially_ not since they may or may not have intel telling them you are currently on a ship headed out of the local supercluster, captured by… Hmm, what did I put there again? Police? Bandits? Space pirates? Either way, it doesn’t matter. You’re all alone.”

The cold feeling spread through you, and where you had tried before, by now you had just given up on the whole pretending-you-weren’t-freezing-thing. You were shivering, and if you had been able to, you would have folded your arms, hugging yourself to keep in some warmth. At the same time, you knew that that wouldn’t help a lot, the cold was coming from inside, not from the outside.

Thinking was already becoming harder as your heartbeat and breathing slowed down, despite you starting to panic. You wanted to believe their words weren’t true, you wanted to believe at least one of your crewmembers would be smart enough to see through the lies, but at the same time… You knew they sometimes handled things more because of emotions than because of common sense, and you didn’t doubt that in this case they would be going for the former.

“C-c-come on, l-let m-m-me ou-out, I d-d-don’t w-want to f-freeze, p-p-please F-fluid,” you tried, your teeth chattering now. Your robes did little to keep you warm.

“Nah, I don’t think I will.”

They looked over at something on their side of the pod, before hitting a few more keys on the keyboard. Nothing really seemed to change at first, not that you could notice anyway, but before long you started to feel drowsy. It would be really easy to just let yourself slip away, but you didn’t want to. You refused. You were not going to sleep here.

You struggled against whatever was flowing through your veins, but every blink seemed to take longer than the next.

“I w-w-will… g-get you f-f-for… t-t-this, Fluid…” you managed to squeeze out as you tried to focus on them. It was starting to get hard to keep your head up, though, so you just leaned it back against the wall, your eyes aimed at the ceiling, where the tubes originated from. They drifted in and out of focus, now, and you wanted nothing more than to just close your eyes. Just for a little bit. It would be fine to close them for a little bit, right? You wouldn’t sleep, you would just… Just close your eyes. Yes. That would be easier.

“Sure you will. Sweet dreams, Marzo.”

You heard the hissing of gas, and you felt something even colder rushing upwards past your legs, and the little bit of warmth the air had provided was suddenly gone, replaced by something so cold it could almost compete with the void of space. Almost.

You closed your eyes, and the cold combined with the chemicals in your system finally overpowered your will to stay awake.

You drifted through your ship, the pull of gravity long forgotten. Around you were people you recognised, your crewmates covered in hoarfrost, unmoving. Their clothes were white like snow and blue like eyes, matching the paleness of their skin and the blueness of their lips. Snow drifted down from somewhere, and you followed the faint sounds of music. A melody you recognised, a melody you could name.

Winter.

You followed the familiar tones of the harpsichord, through the doors of the medbay towards the ballroom, where a ghostly orchestra was waiting for you on an empty ballroom. The mirrors on the walls and ceiling were frosted over, the floor covered in a thin layer of snow, and the candles in the chandelier burnt a cold blue.

In the frosted mirrors, though, you were sure you saw things move, people dancing to the sounds of the music, faster and faster. You moved closer, your feet finally finding the floor, and you could see your reflection doing the same. Your reflection looked different, though. A lot more purple. A lot less frozen. A lot less bloody than you were. You wanted to warn them, for some reason, though you knew it made no sense.

You opened your mouth to speak, as did your reflection, but all that came out were violin sounds, building to a crescendo. You tried again, and again, and again, trying to somehow convey your message to your mirror image, but as the double bass reached its peak, the world behind the mirror disappeared.

Instead, it just reflected snow and frost as the song slowed down, the dulcet melody filling the room. You turned to the instruments, which moved as though someone was actually playing them, and you came closer, standing a few meters away as the melody continued on and on and on, slowing further before speeding up again. You swayed in time with the measures, your eyes closed as you simply listened.

Then, at long last, the music stopped with a last note on the harpsichord, and when you opened your eyes once more, any trace of the instruments had disappeared, and you were alone.

You sank to the floor, crying for a reason you could not remember, your sobs following a melody you could not forget.

And your tears were ice before they reached the ground.


	37. Homeward bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Prism.  
> Contains hallucinations and a touch of unreality.

The deafening silence around you was only broken by your own footsteps on the spongy warped nylium ground, and the occasional vwoop of an enderman, always just out of reach, just out of sight. The three-like fungi stood rows thick, no clear pattern behind them as they obscured the surroundings, making the place difficult to navigate at best.

So far, the closest to a moving thing you had seen was flowing lava, passing through the landscape as a relatively useful waypoint. At least, it had been until you came across another one. And another one. The warped fungus trees didn’t help in the slightest, as they all looked alike enough at first glance that you couldn’t be sure if you had been here before or not. It was frustrating, so damn frustrating.

How long had you even been here? Your watch had stopped working when you had entered the Nether, and with no day-light cycle to speak of, keeping track of time was nigh impossible. It felt like days had passed, maybe longer, as you kept on walking and walking and walking, getting more and more lost with every step. There had been times where you had collapsed, your body simply demanding the rest you didn’t give it, but what little sleep you did get felt like waking dreams. Always in the warped forest, always shifting around, moving, and more than once had you woken up in a spot where you were _certain_ you had not gone asleep in.

Needless to say, you did not get a lot of proper rest.

You weren’t sure what the first time was that you saw it. A person moving out of sight, running through the edges of your vision, hiding behind the trees.

“Wait!” you had called out, but the figure did not wait, and when you went to check, there was nothing behind the trees that signified someone had even _been_ there. But you trusted your eyes, you knew what you had seen.

You didn’t see the figure again until what felt like hours later, and just like before, they didn’t wait when you asked them to, nor did they even respond to you. You wanted to see who they were, wanted it so badly, you just needed some company. You felt like you were losing yourself out there in the warped forest, with its silence that made every sound feel unnatural and eerie.

The first time you teleported while awake came as a surprise to you, born from the desire to be somewhere else, to go to where the figure was and to see them. You weren’t sure how you had managed, knowing you weren’t a full enderman. Logically, it shouldn’t have been possible. And yet, here you were. You were certain there hadn’t been lava flowing near you just a second before, and you were reasonably sure there had been more of the fungus trees a moment ago. Teleportation simply was the easiest explanation for it all.

Still, no matter how much you tried, it didn’t seem like you could do it at will just yet. Instead, you just gave yourself a headache, and eventually you just gave up, preferring to spend your time by just wandering and hopefully getting somewhere you recognised.

Hours and hours, days and days went by, and you started seeing the figure more and more to the point that they were always present, living at the edges of your vision, but you could never quite focus on them. You had more waking dreams, and you could never quite shake the tiredness away from you as you kept dragging yourself forwards on blistered feet. Somewhere, you vaguely remembered something about the effects of sleep deprivation, but you shook the thoughts away. You wouldn’t give in to that kind of thing. You would survive, you would get out of here, if only you could just teleport. If only you could catch that figure, or an enderman, or _anything_.

The second time you teleported came out of frustration, the figure taunting you as you heard multiple enderman vwoop in the background. You had mockingly repeated the noise, and before you knew it, you were somewhere else, closer to where you had thought the figure was. They weren’t, of course, but you couldn’t help but realise what had just happened.

And so you vwooped again, confidently, but nothing happened. You just kept standing there, exactly where you had been, but it didn’t stop you. You made the noise again and again and again, getting more desperate with each repeat, and yet you still stood there until you were sobbing the noises instead of speaking them, until you had broken down crying. The figure still taunted you, at the edges of your vision, and you felt like there were more of them, now, just looking at you, dashing between the fungi weaving through the forest with ease.

So many people, and no one to help you out, no one that came up to you and pointed you towards a place that _wasn’t_ this blasted forest. Couldn’t they see that you needed them? Couldn’t they stand still for just a moment?

You scrambled to your feet as you tried to go after them, tiredness almost forgotten as you ran after them on bleeding feet, desperate to just see someone, to just speak with someone. You just needed to get to one of them, to any of them.

The third time you teleported was the last time you would ever do so. One moment you were there, trying desperately to get to the figures, the next you felt your mind and body splitting and breaking into a thousand facets. Your consciousness changed as you felt, saw, _experienced_ yourself being at many places at once. Something had changed, though, as the forest was no longer eerie and silent.

Instead, you heard the wails of those that had gotten lost before, fractured in the same way you were. They all looked alike, they all felt alike, and you weren’t even certain which of the shards of people had been part of you and which hadn’t.

Instead, you felt the need to run the forest, your tiredness no longer a thing. You knew you had been doing something, before, but what it was, was long forgotten. You just knew the forest, and the forest knew you.


	38. Slurp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Defending myself from YanDan.  
> Contains poisoning, body horror, gore, cannibalism, food horror, and spiders. Also people being on fire. You have been warned.  
> Please skip this one if you have a weak stomach.

This time, you would succeed. You were sure of that. You had thought it all out, even to the point of where you would leave the body and how you would get rid of the blood. You would not fail this time. This time, that pesky spider would die. This time, they would not escape.

At least, that’s what you had been telling yourself up to the moment things had started to go wrong. Somehow, they had _known_ you were coming. Somehow, they had prepared, and you had walked right into a trap. Of course, you didn’t know that until the doors slammed shut behind you, and the web fell upon you. You didn’t know until the lights turned off, and in the darkness you could see familiar green, purple, pink, and blue light up the room.

Of course, you still had your knife, and you had tried to cut yourself loose from the web. Every thread you touched only stuck to you more, and before you knew it you were completely entangled. And Fluid just stood there, chuckling at your pathetic attempts to free yourself. Still, you fought, because that was simply what you did. You were a fighter, a killer. Hunter, not prey.

Speaking of your prey, they came closer, crouching down next to you. Somehow, you had the feeling they were grinning behind that helmet of theirs, although you had no way of telling.

“Hello, YanDan. How… _nice_ of you to drop by.” You could hear the insincerity and disdain dripping from their voice as you thought you noticed something in their hand.

“Fluid. The pleasure’s _aaaaaall_ mine. Now cut me loose so we can settle this the proper way, with weapons instead of underhand trickery.” You stared them straight in the eyes as you spoke, your voice unwavering. For a moment, the spider kept silent, just staring right back at you. Then, they spoke up.

“Do you really think I am _that_ dumb? Besides… This is a lot more _fun_.” They spat out the last word, and there was a promise of pain in there. Pain on your side, that was.

Before you could respond, they properly grabbed the thing in their hand, revealing a syringe filled with a purple liquid. You didn’t like it one bit, and despite your attempts at keeping a cool and nonchalant façade, you started struggling against the web to get out, to get away.

Not that it helped you a whole lot. Fluid held you down with a knee, pushing your head to the side with a hand. Then they sunk the syringe into your neck, chuckling as they pushed down the plunger. You immediately felt it entering your veins, burning its way through your body. You had to bite down a scream, and you had to focus really hard to not twitch and trash around. You were not going to give them that pleasure.

Instead, you just looked at them with a gaze of concentrated hate and murder.

“You know what this is? This is a very special poison that will liquidize you from the inside out. Your bones, muscles, and organs, that is, I made it so that it doesn’t affect your nerves or skin. You will feel _all_ of it happening. And after that… Well. My underlings need their slurp.” Fluid chuckled again, and fear gripped your heart. What they had described didn’t sound pleasant in the slightest, and while you had gone through a lot already, both at their hands and those of others, somehow the thought of liquidizing didn’t sound very appealing.

They were right, though. You felt it. You felt the poison eating away at your organs, you could feel yourself losing the control over your body as your muscles went, slowly but surely. It burns as it did so, like a strong acid going through everything you were. Still, you managed to keep in screams until you felt your vocal cords turning to liquid, and by that point you couldn’t scream if you wanted to.

Your vision was the first to go as your eyes turned into mush, followed quickly by your sense of taste, then smell, and lastly hearing. You had just touch and feeling left, and you knew those wouldn’t stop until your body would eventually give up. Not long afterwards, you also stopped being able to move even the smallest muscle as they burnt away, your meat and organs sloshing like soup in a pouch of skin. It was a strange kind of sensation, but you knew you didn’t find it pleasant in the slightest. You were still alive, too, which confused you, but there was little you could do about it right there and then.

Then, something changed. You felt someone moving your husk around, removing bits of web and repositioning your arms and legs to lay them straight next to each other. Then you felt something else, hundreds of tiny feet crawling over your skin as you felt more and more web being wrapped around you.

The whole process took what felt like minutes, and by then you were wrapped head to toe in sticky spider string, save for your face. Again, you felt yourself being moved, this time seemingly upwards, and not too long later you felt your liquidized insides shifting towards your feet and legs. Then you felt metal nails dancing over the skin of your face, resting at the wound that you knew was under your eye. It was pulled open a little, and you felt metal slice deeper into it. A knife, you would guess by the shape of it.

Seconds later, you felt how something round was poked through the wound. It confused you, momentarily, until you felt it stir through the insides, followed by gentle suction. It certainly was strange, hanging there and feeling how warm liquid insides moved out of you through what simply had to be a straw.

If you still had a stomach, you were sure you would be throwing up at the idea, specifically because you had the feeling that it was Fluid that was currently enjoying a YanDan smoothie.

The feeling went on for a while, and then it left. The straw was replaced by what felt like a longer tube, and then the longest part of your torment started. Over the course of multiple days, you felt how every bit of you got sucked out, little by little, sometimes more than other times, and yet, still you lived.

You lived until every bit of you was gone, until your body was nothing but skin, nerve, and brain, and even then did you only die as you felt fire licking over you, as all that remained of you was burnt to ashes.

You considered it a kindness, a mercy kill.

Your last thought was that there was no way in hell you would have done the same.


	39. The ides of October

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Arkai, requested by Arkai.  
> Contains stabbing, poisoning, and blood.

“Are you sure about this?” they had asked. You stood before them, your request still hanging in the air, the room tense.

Of course you weren’t sure about it. You liked living, you really did, but as time ticked on, you had grown tired. Tired of fighting, tired of defending yourself for the simple right to live. And if you were being honest, the dead didn’t seem to be all too incapacitated or bothered by their unalive state, so how bad could it be, really?

Still, the idea of dying to unknown hands didn’t sit well to you. And that’s when you had turned to your team for help. The team that had defended you in the month before, the team you had helped defend. Now, you were asking the exact opposite of them.

You wanted to die by their hands, and not by anyone else’s. You had already been weakened by YanDan’s attempt to skewer you, earlier that day, and Saega’s earlier attempt to help you by cutting your neck with a sharp bit of piping hadn’t quite worked out either.

And so you had come to Fluid.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

It was a lie and you knew it, and you knew that _they_ knew, but they nodded anyway.

“Very well. Any preference for how, or…?”

You simply shook your head.

“Just do it. My only request is no hypnotization, besides that… You do you.”

“I see. Well, I’ll see what I can whip up.”

With that, they had left, and you were left alone. Somewhere, you had not expected to actually come out of the meeting alive, but here you were, your heart still beating, saturation remaining in your skin.

\---

It had been hours later when you had gotten the message to return to the common area of the ship. Your crew was all there, even those that had died before, like Ash and Roxy. They were sitting around a table loaded with food, delicacies you remembered from back home. One spot in the middle was left open for you to sit, and conversation quieted down as you walked towards them. No one present seemed to be unaware of what would soon be happening, or at the very least, what you thought would be happening, but you were still happy that everyone had come.

You sat down with a wry smile. It still felt weird to be at what would essentially be your murderparty, even though you had no idea what had been planned. On the opposite side of the table, Fluid stood up. They removed their helmet, setting it down on the table next to them, before speaking up.

“My dear crewmates, both alive and dead, I would like to raise a toast. To Arkai!”

Everyone picked up their glasses, each seemingly filled with the same Bordeaux red liquid, and you did the same, wondering if this was how you would die. It had to be, right? There had to be a poison in there, knowing Fluid. Nonetheless, you raised your glass along with the others.

“To Arkai!” sounded from all around you, and you took a sip.

It was sweet, but not unpleasantly so, and you tasted a faint hint of berry in it. Nothing out of the ordinary, though. You didn’t immediately feel something taking effect either, and you had to bite your tongue not to ask Fluid what was going to happen, or when.

You simply had to trust them.

Conversation around you resumed, and you chatted a little bit with Willow and Teithor, who were sitting next to you as you scooped some of the dishes onto your plate. The others actually let you pick and choose first, no doubt because of the situation, but it was a nice gesture anyway.

Your smile turned less wry as you started eating, and you were genuinely enjoying yourself. From the opposite side of the table you heard snippets of conversation about what sounded like a new blue bat species, while others had gone into the theoretical realm of ship adjustments that could really liven the place up. It was just about enough to make you relax, to make you almost forget about what you were there for.

The truth of the situation came crashing in again when you realised you were relaxing more than you should, when you realised your muscles started to become slow in responding to what your brain wanted them to do.

You slumped back in your chair, your fork clattering to the ground. Immediately the others became silent again, looking from you to Fluid and back to you.

“It is time.”

As if practiced, they all stood up, before moving the table and chairs out of the way, the food forgotten. Then they found their place in a half-circle around you, each having pulled out a dagger. They were as different as the people standing there, some longer, some shorter, some embellished, some simple, but all of them looked wickedly sharp. Each one enough to do the job.

Antonka was the first to step forwards, their dagger one with a bat as a cross-guard. You couldn’t lift a finger as they approached, and you became vaguely aware that you couldn’t really feel sensations on your skin anymore.

“They decided I should go first, as the original backstabber of the team,” Tonka simply stated, before walking around your chair and jamming their dagger between your shoulder blades. It didn’t hurt, not that you could feel, anyway, although you were vaguely aware of the pressure where the blade had been lodged into your spine. As they walked away, you saw their hands were stained with blood, already having turned into a familiar black ooze.

Skye stepped up next, the only thing coloured about them their dagger in turquoise and red, evenly split along the middle.

“I never thought I would be stabbing someone from a team I’m actually loyal to, but here we are I guess.” Without much more ceremony, she left her dagger sticking out from your gut, blood welling up slowly. You couldn’t move your head to look at it, but you knew how it would be going from red to silver to a reddish orange before going completely black. Then Skye stepped backwards, and Skyy took her place. She didn’t say much before neatly depositing her netherite dagger next to Skye’s.

Ash was next, and different from the other dead people, they actually looked a little bit sad.

“It’s because you asked for this, but… Yeah. See you on the other side.”

You heard and smelt your skin searing as their blade went into your shoulder, the blue soulflames it was doused in greedily licking over your skin and clothes, but not setting them alight. This time, no blood came up to the surface, and Ash swapped out for Roxy.

She had gone and actually taken off some of her Watcher regalia, but her dagger still visibly showed who she was. The runes along the blade featured the Watcher symbol a few times, and the cross-guard was covered in small eyes that you were sure you could see blink a few times.

Roxy opened her mouth a few times, to try and start what was no doubt a long speech about this thing or that, but in the end she just saluted as she drove her blade between your ribs, the eyes opening up on her face showing that she wasn’t in fact as composed as she was pretending to be.

Then came the living, one by one. Renn’s cat ears laid flat against his hair as he nervously held his dagger in a shaking hand. It didn’t have a cross-guard, and instead the blade seemed to be lodged between two golden cat’s paws on either side.

“Sorry, Arkai.”

Despite the nervousness, his dagger struck true, the blade sinking in your other shoulder. The moment it did, he turned and walked away, finding back his place in the circle. Teithor patted him on the back as they passed him on the way towards you. Where others had had daggers that looked as though they had barely been used, the same could not be said for Teithor’s. The blade looked well-used and well-kept, an eagle’s head adorning the pommel. Unlike Renn, Teithor showed no nervousness in the slightest.

“It’s a shame this is how it should end, but if this is what you want, then so be it.”

With that, they found another spot between your ribs to stab you. By now, you started to have some difficulty breathing, but you were still kicking. It couldn’t take too much longer, though.

Saega stepped up next, his blade made from jagged wood wrapped in bits of vine.

“So… Beneficial cutting, huh? Let me take a stab at that.”

If you could, you would have groaned. Instead, you had to sit and wait while Saega went and counted out some ribs before inserting his knife with surgical precision. At the very least you could see Fluid actually rolling their eyes while sighing, which was just about the reaction you wanted to give too.

“What? You all should know how bad my puns are by now.”

Shaking his head, he went back to his place, while Willow stepped forwards. Her weapon looked prehistoric and futuristic at the same time, a blade made of bone and a handle of smooth metal filled with lights. Despite its appearance, you knew it would be _very_ good at what it was supposed to do, as all Willow’s weapons tended to be like that.

“You know, I’m going to miss you. I know you won’t be _gone_ gone, but… Yeah. You know what I mean,” she said, a wry smile on their face before stabbing you in the chest, missing your heart by a few inches. You were certain she was crying as she walked away and took her position.

Fluid was the last to move up to you as your head started swimming, your vision slowly turning as black as your blood had done.

“I hope this is about satisfactory. You _did_ say you wanted to die by the hands of your teammates, after all.” There was a gentle smile on their face, one you didn’t quite recognise on them. “I’m going to have to take your silence as a yes.”

They lifted their dagger, a beautiful push dagger with a spider motif. Four additional blades flanked the main one, extending from the arms of the spider that formed the handle. Fluid looked you into your eyes once more before sinking it into your heart.

Your eyes had fallen shut before they had returned to their place amongst your teammates.

As the colour drained from your blood, so did the life disappear from your body.


	40. I spy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Attack on Teithor, requested by Teithor.  
> Contains spiders, blood, gore, torture, and repeatedly dying.  
> Also contains not-so-subtle references to Caught in the Spiders Web.

One by one, you had watched them fall.

One by one, your teammates had died, their bodies broken by claw and poison alike.

One by one, their bodies had disintegrated, respawning gods knew where.

You were still standing, though. You and Willow, fighting back to back against an unstoppable tide of spiders. You knew it was pointless, you knew there was no winning this, and you knew that Willow knew, too. Still, you tried. You had a blade in each hand, whizzing through the air with practiced ease, although your arms were starting to tire.

Spiders fell all around you, viscera drowning the ground in a hellish green, disconnected legs twitching their last few times before falling still. And yet, they kept coming and coming and coming, and you caught yourself wondering where from.

Behind you, you heard Willow groan as something hit her, and for a short moment, you were distracted.

That short moment decided everything after that.

This simple second in which your focus had wavered had been enough for a spider to break through your defences, and you felt mandibles sink into your exposed skin. It hurt, at first, and then it started burning. With a primal cry you cut the spider away from your arm, but the damage had been done. You saw lines of green spreading through your veins, the burning sensation spreading along with it.

“Willow, you _have_ to get out of here, right now! I won’t be able to hold them off much longer!” you exclaimed, blocking yet another attack with your swords.

“I can’t just leave you to _die_ , what are you thinking?!”came the answer, followed by the sound of arachnids being ripped apart by claws. Her stance did not come as a surprise. You knew how fiercely protective she could be towards her friends, and just leaving one to die while getting out herself was simply not her style.

“Come on, just… just save yourself. Please.”

Your arm and shoulder felt as though they were on fire, and you could see the skin around the bite turning a sickly green. It was bad. It was really bad.

“Alagos, I’m _not_ leaving you here, and that’s final.”

Her use of your name, your _original_ name gave you pause, and for a moment you just fought on as silently as one could fight. You had been friends for a long while, now, but she had barely ever used it in all that time. If you wanted, you were certain you could count it on one hand. If she deemed the situation serious enough to use it… Well.

“Alright then. But you leave when I fall, okay? You have to get out of here, you _have_ to tell someone, _anyone_ , about what’s here.”

“I can live with that.”

You doubted it. You honestly doubted it, but if you were going to perish here, there was little you could do about it.

By now, you could feel the poison everywhere, sapping away your energy and making you nauseous, but you kept standing, you kept going. You had your training to thank for that, but even that was only _just_ enough. Your eyes kept going out of focus, and keeping your arms up was difficult, so damn difficult.

Still, you sliced and chopped and stabbed towards the spiders, although by now you mostly focused on those towards your sides, the ones closest to Willow. It was the least you could do, to ensure she would be able to get out of here.

The issue with this kind of fighting was that you had to leave your front and flanks undefended for short bursts of time.

Short moments the spiders were all to happy to make use of.

You felt them biting more and more, your body burning with poison, and you couldn’t help but yell out. You felt their claws scratching open your skin, drawing more blood, and before long, you were shaking on your legs as more and more of them found a place to cling on to, as your world quickly turned into a brilliant inferno.

“Willow, go. It is… _time_.”

Your words felt loud, so loud to you, but you didn’t know if Willow heard them as you fell to your knees, still holding your blades, still trying to take spiders to the grave with you. The world started to feel duller, though, as the pain slowly ebbed away.

You were sure you heard Willow scream, you were sure you saw the brilliant light of dragonflame erupting all around, you were sure you saw arachnids turn to ashes before your eyes.

You toppled over slowly, the last bits of consciousness leaving your body as you fell.

The last thing you saw where wings unfurling above you.

\---

The pain was gone by the time you woke up again. Instead, you felt cold stone under your back, and saw a cave-like ceiling above you. The walls were lit in a vaguely green light, but that wasn’t what grabbed your attention. It was the cobwebs that were all over the place. Cobwebs that shouldn’t be in your bedroom. Speaking of which, actually, the rest of the details also didn’t check out.

You went to sit up, to gain a better understanding of what was going on around you, only to find yourself held down by thick metal bands. It didn’t stop you from trying to get out of the bonds, though. You disliked being locked up or bound in any way, and this was most definitely no exception.

You heard doors opening, followed by the sound of something hard clacking on stone. Footsteps, but… Too many of them. More than you would expect from a person.

“I spy… with my little eye… A little fly, trapped in my web,” a voice broke the relative silence. It sent shivers down your spine, the clicks and hisses weaved through the words making them sound exotic and dangerous.

“I would suggest you let me go, right this instant.” You tried to make your voice sound as calm and collected as you could, which was harder than it seemed. There was still a slight waver you couldn’t get away, but it was close enough.

“Oh? The little fly is loud… And amusing. Let me rephrase that for you. Accept my mark and I will let you go.”

Finally, they walked into view. They were to a spider what a centaur would be to a human, except the scale was all wrong. They towered above you, eight red eyes focussed on you as mandibles larger than your hand clicked together and spread in what could only be a grin.

“Who are you? I’m not just going to accept some mark from any random person, captive or not.” Once again, you tried your bonds, unsurprised that they had stayed exactly the same as a minute earlier.

You heard a clicking and hissing sound that could possibly be a chuckle if you read into it well enough, and you saw _something_ light up in their eyes.

“You lay before Arachne, the ruler of this domain. And believe me, you will not leave here before you bear my mark, one way or the other,” they hissed as they came closer, standing next to whatever you were laying on and bending forwards, before poking your bare chest with the tip of a sharp claw. “So _choose!_ ”

Their words didn’t entirely make sense to you, but there was enough sadism laced through their tone that you took it seriously. You had previously experienced self-proclaimed _rulers_ that only used their power and influence to bully others, to hurt and maim and kill, and it was not something you would stand for. It was not a mark you would bear, not willingly at the very least.

“I will not.”

You clenched your fists as you looked at them, and it was almost like this was the answer they had wanted, judging by the look in their eyes. It scared you a little bit, that.

It was why you mentally prepared for pain the moment they moved again, and you were right to do so. You felt their claws tearing into the skin of your arms, and you gritted your teeth to stifle a scream. You were not going to give them that kind of satisfaction.

“I will stop once you accept my mark, no earlier,” they said, their voice drenched in sadism, their eyes locked on yours.

The hours and hours after that were some of the worst you had experienced in your life. Of course, you had gone through your fair share of injury in the arena, and you had the scars to show for it, but this…

It was methodical torture, taking your skin bit by bit stripping it off you without hesitation.

It was poison in your system, making your head swim and your everything burn.

It was seeing your guts ripped out, held high above you so you could see them.

It was passing out, exhausted from pain, only to wake up to find you had respawned in the same place.

It was unending.

Arachne was true to their word, and you did not feel them take a break, not even for a second, and you had to wonder how long they could possibly go on for. You had to wonder how long it would take for you to get desensitised to the feeling of pain, how long you would have to withstand this torment before you could call yourself the victor.

And you had to wonder if you wanted it to get that far. You didn’t want to lose, especially not now you had put in so much already, especially not after all this pain, but on the other side, wasn’t that the precise way the sunken cost fallacy worked? Were your ideals worth it, were they _truly_ worth it?

Another couple of hours of torment later, you decided it wasn’t. You had lost count of how many times you had respawned, of how many times they had taken the skin from your face, of how many times they had ripped out our hair, of how many times they had disembowelled you alive, and still the pain hadn’t become less, still it hadn’t become bearable.

And so, in the end, you had no choice but to speak up.

“Stop, please, I- I accept.”

Arachne’s grin only widened as they extended a claw, piercing it through your heart without any hesitation.

“Excellent. Rise, little spider.”

You felt the pain first, spreading through your body, quickly followed by a numbness, and seconds later you found yourself nodding away.

\---

The next time you opened your eyes, your world was tinted a brilliant green.


End file.
